Every Little Step

One of the reasons why A Chorus Line lasted 15 years on Broadway was not just because of the marvelous dancing and songwriting, or even because of the unique (at the time) behind-the-scenes glimpse at the Broadway casting process. It was because the stories of the dancers (this one too old, this one too flat-chested, this one too homely) rang so incredibly true. Turns out, they rang true because they were true.
Thirty-five years ago, A Chorus Line creator Michael Bennett assembled some dancer friends (and a giant jug of bad red wine) and recorded their stories, which were later turned into production numbers for the play. Those tapes, along with interviews with the original cast and creators (including composer Marvin Hamlisch) and archival footage of Bennett (who died of AIDS in 1987), form the backdrop to Every Little Step, a documentary about, yes, the casting process of A Chorus Line’s 2006 Broadway revival.
If you’re a fan of A Chorus Line, you’ll love the juicy tidbits revealed about small but pivotal changes made to the original play— the kind of changes that amount to the difference between Broadway success and Broadway immortality (I won’t spoil the surprise by revealing them here). There’s also an enormously moving monologue by an actor named Jason Tam, who’s trying out for the role of Paul, a young gay man who talks about his shame in coming out to his parents. The audition is fabulous, but it’s the reaction of the revival’s director Bob Avian and his crew (many gay men) that really gets you—they’re reduced to awestruck tears.
Of course, Every Little Step is absorbing: Documentaries about the audition process always are. You root for your favorites and feel their pain when they are cut. There’s also some great singing and dancing. But the novelty is gone—blame reality TV. We’ve seen all sorts of TV shows about auditions (I watched one recently on PBS about the casting of Billy Elliot)—and we get to see great dancing on our TV all the time. (I was DVRing that night’s episode of So You Think You Can Dance as I watched the film.) What’s more, A Chorus Line has a distinctly pre-AIDS era feel to it: It was made in a time when gay men felt isolated—they hadn’t yet banded together for a cause and come out stronger on the other side.
Every Little Step is a foolproof formula—and indeed it works here. But much of what made the original play so great feels dated. Maybe that’s why the Broadway revival closed after just two years.