Every Little Step

A bare bones documentary look at the audition process Every Little Step waltzes into the River Oaks theater. The play A Chorus Line while familiar to fans of Broadway and students of musical drama may be less well known to the public at large. By concentrating on the, sometimes excruciating, elimination procedure known as the audition the filmmakers make the audience realize the rigors professional thespians go through to land a role.
Every Little Step occurs on the occasion of the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. The original play ran from July 1975 trough August of 1990 and there was a movie version in the mid-80s. The revival, proving that all things lose luster with age, ran for about two years starting in 2006.
The film is bracketed with audio clips of the play's director/choreographer Michael Bennett speaking about the creation of the play. Seen only as a disembodied voice on a reel to reel tape Bennett talks about birthing the play from scratch. Bennett himself aslo helmed the Broadway hit Dreamgirls and died in 1987.
Essentially the show consists of a line of people, actors and dancers themselves engaged in an audition, talking about their lives, their fears, their hopes. The song "What I Did For Love" is a show stopper but was never what could be considered a big hit.
But the songs are never heard in their entirety nor are monologues from the play given a full airing. The point of Every Little Step lies in its depiction of the waiting around the audition room and that moment when the solo performer gives their all on a bare stage to a small group of people sitting in the dark in the middle of the theater. It is here that the heartbreak of not being the right physical type or the joy of having the perfect pitch for a song becomes apparent. We never really get to know the people who are actually auditioning, not in the sense of any emotional bond. But like life itself the point of Every Little Step seems to be the road that leads to the show and not the show itself. Every Little Step should be required viewing for anyone engaged in the theatrical profession. Fans of documentaries in general will find it concise but not essential.