Broadway Babylon (35 page)

Ron Link was hired to direct the dance- and music-intensive project, but had never directed a Broadway musical before. Denny Flinn observed, “Some of the cast came to believe he had never before
seen
a Broadway musical.” Link was eventually fired by the Australian Stigwood, not known as a hands-on producer and as usual holed up in his Caribbean mansion. Director-playwright Tom Eyen, another Broadway musical virgin, was hired to replace the unmissed Link.

Eyen’s solution for the looming disaster was to cut several of the dances, which mightily frustrated choreographer Tony Stevens and his assistant, Michon Peacock, as well as about a dozen dancers who’d sweated over the routines for weeks. Then Stevens was fired, in keeping with the Broadway tradition that in problem-plagued musicals choreographers are the first to get the boot—because they’re the least to blame. Stevens’s replacement was Grover Dale. He added a first-act finale that included a couple of singing “Dykettes” and chorus boys in vine-leaf G-strings who aimed their bare buns at audience members who were dazed or delighted, depending.

Before the show could be savaged by predictable critics, producer Stigwood shut it down. Unusually, he made up the entire loss to
Rachel
’s investors from his own pocket. The investors were placated, but not the dancers and choreographers who felt, not for the first time, victimized by inept and/or uncaring directors, producers, and writers. Tony Stevens affirmed, “Most of us—the dancers in the show, the chorus people—knew more about how to put a show together than many of the producers we had worked for.”

G
ROWING UP IN THE MIDWEST
, Stevens had aimed to “go to New York, dance on Broadway, and be the Gene Kelly of my generation.” In three years he danced in eight shows, then turned to choreography. Michon Peacock came to Manhattan from St. Paul, Minnesota, with similar dreams, and also
danced in several non-hits. After
Rachel
, she revealed, “Tom Eyen was very degrading to dancers, and Ron Link was not much better.”

A Buddhist, Peacock belonged to the “chanting sect” of Nichiren Shoshu, founded in the thirteenth century C.E. (Other members include Tina Turner and Patrick Duffy of
Dallas
.) In her bedroom Michon chanted before a small shrine, practicing the sect’s philosophy that change occurs from within. She believed it was up to dancers to change their own lot, rather than hoping for better directors and producers. She and Tony got together and talked, then spoke with other dancers, eventually conceiving of a company of dancers who would write, direct, produce, design, and, of course, choreograph their own shows. (From
Rachel
’s chorus, Carole (Kelly) Bishop, Wayne Cilento, and Thomas Walsh would become part of the cast of
A Chorus Line
.)

Peacock and Stevens realized that an influential choreographer, or director-choreographer, would help their first project along. Michael Bennett had begun as a hoofer, then excelled as a d-c. “I chanted for a couple of hours and then called him,” Michon explained. “Sure enough, he wanted to see us the next day.” They met and decided to “hold a talk session to find out where dancers have come from and gone to, and to create something.…” Little did they know.

Michon contacted Bill Thompson, a Buddhist ex-dancer and co-founder of the Nickolaus Exercise Centers. He donated the use of a dance studio. Then the trio started bringing in dancers. At midnight on Saturday, January 18, 1974, the group congregated to dance, talk, and share their experiences. First came exercise and routines. Michon, Tony, and Michael had written down 100 questions for each performer, about everything from real names and astrological signs to childhood backgrounds, life as a dancer, and experiences in New York.

People sat on the floor in a circle, not a line, and everyone spoke in turn. Various dancers had declined to participate, afraid of not being articulate enough or overexposing themselves psychologically. Some had been suspicious of Michael Bennett’s involvement and motives. Michon Peacock already had cause to be wary, for she’d been professionally involved with Bennett in
Seesaw
, a 1973 musical he was brought in to revamp. Grover Dale was the original choreographer, but was demoted to working for Bennett, who brought in his close assistant Bob Avian, later the official co-choreographer of
A Chorus Line
.

Michon had been with
Seesaw
from the start, and though lucky to remain with the show, was dismayed by Bennett’s firing so many dancers and by the way it was done. He delegated Dale to tap dancers on the shoulder immediately after they returned to the wings from a performance, coolly informing them, “Don’t bother coming back tomorrow, you’re fired.” She and Michael respected but didn’t necessarily like each other.

When
Seesaw
ran into financial problems despite the overhaul, Bennett told her, “There’s only one thing we haven’t tried yet.” What, she wondered? “Chanting,” he said, for he’d chanted for success, years before. So thirteen people, including
Seesaw
dancer Tommy Tune, gathered in Michon’s apartment and for one hour chanted for a financial upturn in their musical. The next day, Mayor John V. Lindsay agreed to a cameo appearance on stage, in place of his “almost lookalike” Ken Howard. He consented to be mugged to music, then picked up by a dancing hooker in the opening scene. Local publicity for the casting stunt was tremendous, including frontpage photos of Peacock and other female dancers playing “hooker” with the mayor in the
New York Daily News
and the
Post
. Ticket sales soared, and
Seesaw
was saved.

When he became involved with what would become
A Chorus Line
, Michael Bennett seemed open and acted friendly. Said Nicholas Dante, “He stressed that he was a hoofer, just one of the gang.” But though he complimented Peacock on her leadership ability, Bennett gradually took over her and Tony Stevens’s dance-themed project. He did not let on how intrigued he was by the material. After a second session with the chorus dancers, the three principals and fledgling writer Nicholas Dante met in Bennett’s office. Michael announced his opinion that the material would make an interesting … book. Michon and Tony were astounded. They’d had their hearts set on a stage project. Bennett pointed out that he’d signed to direct a Broadway comedy starring Valerie “Rhoda” Harper—
Thieves
, by noted playwright Herb Gardner (
A Thousand Clowns
), from which he and she eventually withdrew, Harper replaced by Marlo “That Girl” Thomas.

G
IVEN THE POPULARITY
of the playwright and intended star, Bennett didn’t want to miss out on a likely hit—
Thieves
. But he also didn’t want to relinquish the embryonic project that would become
A Chorus Line
. And so the latter was shelved until the timing was right. Some insiders think he was slow to recognize the material’s potential. “It was more about control, really,” offered
A Chorus Line
dance captain Alex MacKay, “about getting his hands on a future endeavor which, if it took off, he’d be in total charge of.

“As a former dancer, Michael could hardly fail to find it somewhat interesting, but the passion for telling the stories about individual dancers, getting their reality out to audiences, that came entirely from Tony and Michon.… At one point, Michael even voiced his doubts about ‘a bunch of gypsies rambling on’ about themselves.”

After Bennett had left the nascent dance project for
Thieves
, subsequent sessions were poorly attended. Without his presence, most dancers viewed the sessions as closer to psychotherapy than a future work opportunity. “We all
tried so hard and we couldn’t get past that point,” lamented Michon. Thus, after Bennett departed
Thieves
—an ironic title, in view of future events—Michon and Tony met with him and virtually gave away the raw material for
A Chorus Line
. “If you give me the tapes I’ll do something,” Bennett offered. “I think I can get [producer] Joe Papp interested in doing a workshop. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll do something with it.”

Tony Stevens explained, “It was ours to decide what to do with.… We all decided it was better that it had a life. He had the power and the resources, and we did not.” The trio making the decision comprised Peacock, Stevens, and Nicholas Dante, the writer who’d been required to type and shape the material; he became the official number two writer after the better-known James Kirkwood was brought aboard. After the three got back to Bennett, he had each sign a brief contract giving him control of all the material. In return, they got one dollar apiece, which was all Michon Peacock and Tony Stevens ever derived from their brainchild.

Tony later said of the highly personal stories, “There was a fear that [the material] would be misused. More than losing a million dollars or whatever, which never really entered our minds at that time, we were afraid somebody was going to get used or hurt. More than anything else, we didn’t want that to happen.” Michon noted in retrospect, “I think now that Michael knew all along that it was going to be a musical.”

The sessions and interviews, with Bennett in full charge and Dante in attendance, continued. The latter typed and did menial work. Formerly a dancer, he’d told about his dramatic and demeaning drag-show years at the first meeting. (As Dante didn’t appear in
A Chorus Line
, his story was reassigned to the character Paul San Marco.) “The major reason Michael asked me to write the show was he needed my story and knew he wouldn’t get it otherwise.” The story, which shocked the other dancers, would be an emotional highpoint of the future musical.

Dante was hired with the proviso that other, more professional writers could be brought in. “For a while,” he confessed, “I felt like the little fag dancer that tagged along.” Because he was more open about his sexuality, Dante was occasionally the butt of “fag” jokes from Bennett, who was more guarded and coy about his own orientation.

S
HREWDLY
, M
ICHAEL
took the
Chorus Line
material to Joseph Papp rather than to a commercial Broadway producer. The latter would have demanded high-concept, fiscally promising material that Bennett wasn’t all that sure he had. In commercial theater there’s success or failure. “Michael was not clairvoyant,” said James Kirkwood. “This was very iffy, untried, experimentative material. It could easily have flopped on Broadway, and an uptown flop would
have lowered Michael’s standing. Like it or not, your artistic standing is tied to your commercial standing.”

Via Papp and the Shakespeare Festival, Bennett would be working with a net, could exercise greater control, brook less interference and, if
A Chorus Line
did fail with audiences, chalk it up as a noble, avant-garde experiment. If it did well, it would move on and upward.

To further cover himself, Bennett hired Marvin Hamlisch, recent winner of three Oscars for
The Way We Were
and
The Sting
, to compose the score. An ex-rehearsal pianist for Broadway musicals, Marvin had worked with Michael on
Henry, Sweet Henry
, a 1967 musical derived from the nonmusical 1964 movie
The World of Henry Orient. A Chorus Line
would be Hamlisch’s first Broadway score.

As for the cast, Bennett didn’t feel obligated to retain the original dancers. He asked the group to sign legal releases allowing him to use their recorded material and to quote whatever (and however) he wished. Each dancer signed, each received one dollar. When it came time to cast, all the original dancers had to audition—some for the chance to play themselves. Nor were the originals more likely to receive an individual song than a newcomer. The first song written was “Sing!” for Renee Baughman, a Nichiren Buddhist who’d chanted to get her own song.

Original cocreator Tony Stevens was going to appear in
A Chorus Line
as a dancer-actor, but was unexpectedly asked by Bob Fosse to assist him on
Chicago
, which seemed a much more surefire hit. So Tony chose to be the celebrated Fosse’s real-life assistant rather than play an assistant to the character Zach. Far from being upset over the defection, Michael Bennett encouraged Tony to strike out. Was it to encourage him to pursue his dream or to be rid of a possibly proprietary (though not legally) originating influence? Denny Martin Flinn, who played Zach and Greg in the international touring company of
A Chorus Line
between 1980 and ‘82, revealed that Bennett had initially been “gracious” to Tony and Michon, as they had brought the idea and material to him—in return for which each had been paid a token dollar. But once Tony departed, Flinn said, “If Michael felt any twinge of guilt … there were no longer any reminders.” Michon Peacock had already joined the
Chicago
company.

Michael and his team got on with the business of fashioning
A Chorus Line
, which debuted before a paying audience at the New York Shakespeare Festival on April 14, 1975. In May came the official Off-Broadway opening. Rave reviews ensued, with
The Village Voice
calling it “possibly the most effective Broadway musical since
Gypsy.… A Chorus Line
is the best commercial musical in years.” The paper ironically noted “Bennett’s devotion to the myth of Broadway.…” In July,
A Chorus Line
opened on Broadway. The rest is theater
history, as it went on to become Broadway’s longest-running musical until
Cats
superceded it.

Michon Peacock, who with Tony Stevens conceived and launched the idea and material that became
A Chorus Line
, was not only neither devastated nor embittered, but buoyantly philosophical: “To have been able to have been in the right place at the right time to be the instrument for the cause for the whole thing to get moving” was, she believed, “wonderful.” For it was a show not just about dancing, but about dancers. Tony was similarly proud to have been involved from the start. “I’m glad for them they’re not enraged,” reflected Ben Bagley. “I’d have to struggle, really struggle, to have and maintain such a Zen-like calmness and balance.”