"Bullshit really, reeking of Broadway double standards" wrote Peter Hall of the original 1976 A Chorus Line. But, while this hymn to the boys and girls in the back row is undeniably manipulative, it also works theatrically as Nikolai Foster's exemplary Crucible production proves.
Almost 30 years on, the show seems to have a prelapsarian innocence: it describes the lives of Broadway dancers in the era before Aids which killed not only the show's prime mover, Michael Bennett, but several of his co-creators. In using the competitiveness of auditioning as a metaphor for American life, the show also endorses the system it criticises. "We're all special," says one of the 17 dancers taking part in a Darwinian elimination-process that whittles them down to eight; yet the show's climactic number, One, celebrates the glittering precision that turns individuals into a unified line.
Yet two factors make this a remarkable musical. One is that it is about process rather than product: it shows the sweat, struggles and humiliations that go into creating a well-oiled Broadway machine. It also exposes the vulnerability of these unhappy hoofers. Cassie, who has had an affair with the director, is bawled out by him as being too good for the chorus. Sheila, a supposedly tough nut, reveals how ballet offered a refuge from her childhood. And Paul describes memories of a Catholic boyhood from which he escaped into tatty drag-revue.
Foster's excellent production humanises a show that can seem a slick showbiz confessional. He starts by making the director a less remote presence than he was in the original: in Jason Durr's fine performance he not only mingles more with the gypsies but suggests that he is just as driven as the dancers whose fates he controls. Josefina Gabrielle as Cassie, having done a sensational show-stopping dance under angled mirrors, also conveys the job-hunger that leads her to retreat into choric anonymity
Daniel Crossley as the guilt-haunted Paul, Rachel Wooding as a pigeon-toed ding-a-ling and Nina French as a chorine cracking under the strain of her fixed smile also stand out in a first-rate cast. But that is the paradox of this unusual musical: it makes you aware that behind the militaristic precision of a chorus line lie individuals full of desperation.
· Until January 23. Box office: 0114-249 6000.
