No backstage drama captures the make-or-break stakes of an audition room like the number “I Hope I Get It” from “A Chorus Line.” As panting hopefuls line up at a Broadway cattle call, their interior monologues are pleading with God and calculating their odds.
In James Kirkwood Jr., Nicholas Dante, Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban’s 1975 musical, now in a San Francisco Playhouse production, every single dancer ought to get a role. They’re all so full of desire and talent, so richly human. But there are only eight slots, and each time the imperious director Zach (Keith Pinto) cuts someone, you might feel like you’re losing a limb.
Directed by Bill English, San Francisco Playhouse’s production is notable for putting its longtime choreographer Nicole Helfer onstage for the first time. She plays Cassie, whose ode to dancing begins, “All I know how to do is to point my toes and leap.”