Chorus Line

Apart from the occasional indulgence in some of the more controversial pieces - Chicago, Cabaret, Avenue Q or South Park The Movie - I don't follow musicals. I have been challenged, however, by Andi Denny from Glasgow Music Theatre, who makes a convincing claim that their choice of production, A Chorus Line, has the edge that I believe is more readily found in Live Art. 

So... A Chorus Line. What makes this a good choice for the company?

Honestly? We love a challenge. Glasgow Music Theatre started with four actors rehearsing in a living room, but by the end of the entire thing they were on stage at the Ramshorn. Six productions later and this seems like a natural progression in terms of difficulty level.

It's far and away the most exposed our performers have been, and the most technically demanding our choreography has been. We've also found that one of our favourite things to do is take on the oft-cheesey scripts - the ones you can easily sail through, expecting the audience to just sail with you, totally glossing over the bigger issues there are to be drawn out. I think the beginning of that trend was West Side Story, our third production.

You can do WSS badly and no one will care - the music is soaring, the dances are show-stopping. But to take a real risk and work on the acting and direction - to make it as gritty and honest as it can be, to really give the audience a sense of the hopelessness and violence and desperation that there is there - that's where things get exciting. With this, the parallels between so many people desperate for so few jobs and the current economic state are inescapable.

You are doing more than provoking me to be less small-minded: you are performing as well. How did you end up working with GMT? 

By the summer of 2010 I had been a Drama graduate for two years, trying to make the money it inevitably takes to live while you're looking for acting work, and I met Marion Baird, who turned out to own her own dance school and was the resident choreographer for this reasonably young company.

I had no interest in doing musical theatre (I was very much an actor), but the more I heard about the company and their approach the more I was interested: arts professionals working to take musical theatre out of that lazy, cheesy rut it often falls into, and helping new talent develop in the process. I was a competent singer and dancer, but I was nowhere near trained in either of them. The company keeps itself fresh by always auditioning from scratch -- no one is 'considered' for parts, there is no central returning cast of performers -- so I had to keep working harder and harder to get better to face new competition with each production.

Has the hard work paid off and have you managed to get a good part this time? 

In this production I'm now playing a Broadway-level dancer, and that's all thanks to the training I've had under Marion. But it's all about mucking in, and the years of experience I've now had in Press and Marketing has now got me on their core team of managers, and it feels really fulfilling to be helping the company grow.

As for my part in A Chorus Line I'm playing a borderline-sociopathic, validation-whore called Bobby, who just so happens to have found himself dancing on Broadway after doing some really quite odd things when he was younger. I have a lot to play with (I have entire sections in the middle of my monologue which are silent), so his chequered past with his parents, his sexual awakening, his entirely innocent acts of GBH - it all gets fleshed out, and even if the audience don't fully understand what he's going on about it helps me round my own characterisation out.

What parts of Chorus Line appeal to you? 

There's a 20-minute four-part number right before the interval that's probably the most fun part to dance, but, short of spoilers, there's a monologue towards the end that I adore so much I've stopped watching it in rehearsals, so that I don't ruin the impact it has on me. The script builds toward to the moment when one of the characters is asked about his past and suddenly reveals a lot more than he ever intended to.

Is this something that might convince me about the seriousness of the musical? 

It's all about the catastrophic effects that growing up gay in the Bronx of the 50s and 60s has had on the direction his life went in - it really speaks to me, not because I went through any of that, but because I appreciate the struggles that have gotten us even to this limited point of LGBTQI equality.

Now that we're getting to a stage where change is really starting to happen, it should be something we consider, but my generation of gay men don't seem to even think about how long this fight has been going on for and how good they've got it, because of these men and women who suffered before us. I think A Chorus Line has a really important place in the history of gay voices on the stage - it was one of the first shows to ever speak so frankly about sexuality, and it's all based on the real lives of the original cast. That monologue is relevant, strong, honest, and Gregor delivers it with the subtlety and quiteness it needs to give it weight.

Have you seen a production before? Does it stand out from other musicals? 

That's actually one of the things that stands out about A Chorus Line - it's so rarely done, so even I haven't seen it live. There's a wealth of (illegally filmed) stuff on YouTube, but that's all we have to go on. It's strange, because it was once the most successful piece of musical theatre ever to hit the Broadway stage. It has its own sizeable stash of Tony Awards, and a Pulitzer, and both critical and commercial success under its belt, but it's so unknown in Scotland. Theatre like this seems to have passed Scotland by a lot because everyone sees the West End of London as the musical theatre hub. It's something we want to encourage - the development of musical theatre in Glasgow, beyond the same stash of tired shows that are overdone in this city. There’s a real cultural renaissance going on here and we want to be a part of that.

A Chorus Line stands out as a dancer's musical, but we hope we're bringing a high-standard of singing and acting, and bringing out the underlying themes. Plus it's hard not to get a bit excited at the sight of 20+ people in matching gold sequin costumes.