“No show runs forever,” says one of the dancers in A Chorus Line. After 15 years and 6,137 performances, that finally finally came true for the longest running show in Broadway history.

The show about dancers auditioning for a big Broadway musical closed Saturday night with a highly charged performance that had theatergoers cheering even before the evening started. When people entered the Shubert Theater they were greeted by a neon sign showing the number of performances. They yelled when the house lights went down, and every musical number was greeted by prolonged applause.

There were bravos for Laurie Gamache, who plays Cassie, when she finished her solo dance number “The Music and the Mirror.” And the audience roared during the entire finale when all the dancers, dressed in gold costumes, high kicked their way through “One".

When the applause finally stopped, producer Joseph Papp appeared for a roll call of the dancers in the productionand most of original 1975 cast, who also were brought on stage.

“This show is dedicated to anyone who has ever danced in a chorus or marched in step anywhere,” Papp said. “Take a final bow A Chorus Line."

He also lauded the musical’s creative team, Nicholas Dante, who composed the music, and Ed Kleban, who did the lyrics. The audience and cast members clapped wildly for Michael Bennett, the show’s director and choreographer, who died of AIDS in 1987 at age 44. A huge black and white photo of Bennett appeared as a backdrop.

The sold-out evening benefited the New York Shakespeare Festival, which produced the musical. Tickets were priced from $80 to $500, and many were bought by people who had seen the musical over and over again. Fans gathered around the stage door to applaud cast members as they left after the performance for a party at Mama Leone’s. Some 800 guests were invited to the celebration, which took over three floors at the theater district restaurant.

A Chorus Line was set to close at the end of March, but Papp pushed the final performance back four weeks because of a surge in ticket sales.

The show, based on 40 hours of taped conversations by dancers, started performances in April 1975 at the Shakespeare Festival’s Newman Theater off- Broadway. It moved to Broadway on July 25, 1975, and was at the Shubert Theater thereafter


Text of fax box follows: Cincinnatian in show

Among those taking bows in the last A Chorus Line was Michael Gruber, 25, a Cincinnatian who graduated from Indian Hill High School. Gruber, who played the part of Mike Costa for the past 15 months at the Shubert Theater, won’t be out of work, however. He’ll instead be playing Riff in a national tour of West Side Story.

main A Chorus Line page