'A Chorus Line' Opens Friday at the Marion Palace Theatre — 36 Years After Its Last Run There

MARION, Ohio — "A Chorus Line" opens Friday, July 10, at 7:30 p.m. on the main stage of the Marion Palace Theatre, 276 W. Center St., with additional performances Saturday, July 11, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 12, at 2 p.m.

The timing is no accident. Opening night falls on the theatre's 50th-anniversary reopening celebration, marking the 1976 preservation campaign led by the Palace Guard that saved the downtown landmark. A 6 p.m. reception in the Palace Pavilion precedes Friday's curtain and honors that effort. Admission to the reception comes with the $55 Patron Ticket, which also includes program recognition.

Clare Cooke directs. She has worked at the Palace since 1977 as a performer, choreographer and director, a run that began after she danced on its stage as a Harding High School student and decided she wanted to make shows there herself. She wrote, directed and choreographed her first production in 1984 — "To Ula, With Love," a sold-out tribute to her mentor, director Ula Watts — then spent six years choreographing summer musicals while raising her two children.

In 1990 she took the director's chair for "A Chorus Line" and filled the house. Thirty-six years later, she is back with the same material and a new generation of dancers. Cooke told Marion LIVE in May that the show is ambitious and exacting, but that Marion and the surrounding region have the talent to meet it.

Wink (L) and Cooke (R)

Across generations, Marion has found ways to say thank you. Harding High inducted Cooke into its Hall of Distinguished Graduates in 2009. Nearly 100 friends and family members endowed a performing arts scholarship in her name at the Marion Community Foundation in 2012. In 2016 the Palace staged "To Clare With Love," a tribute revue directed by her daughter that drew more than 100 past performers back to the stage. A plaque honoring her work hangs in the Palace lobby. The newest chapter was the hardest.

Cooke fell at the final rehearsal of last summer's "Annie," missed the run, and worked through surgery and rehabilitation to return in time for the Christmas show. "It's my legacy," she told WKTN in September. Now she directs a musical about dancers reckoning with what they would do if they could no longer dance.

Kristi Wink, choreographer and assistant director for A Chorus Line, works through staging with cast members during rehearsal at the Marion Palace Theatre.

Kristi Wink, a former Miss Ohio who danced on Broadway in "The Will Rogers Follies" before returning home to run the Marion location of Douce Dance Studios, serves as choreographer and assistant director.

The show holds a personal place for Wink, who recalled it as the first Broadway cast album she ever owned. "It was our Hamilton," she told Marion LIVE. Jami Rawlins, director of choirs for Marion City Schools, is the vocal director.

The musical needs little introduction. Conceived, directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett, with music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Edward Kleban, "A Chorus Line" opened at the Public Theater in April 1975, moved to Broadway's Shubert Theatre that July, and ran 6,137 performances before closing in 1990. It won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

The plot is spare by design: 17 dancers audition for eight spots in a Broadway chorus, and a director named Zach pulls their life stories out of them one by one. The Palace's marketing puts it in seven words: "8 Spots. 17 Dancers. One Chance."

The Marion cast leans heavily local. Kain Anderson, who holds a vocal music education degree from Otterbein and recently played Gaston in the Palace's "Beauty and the Beast," takes on Zach. Danielle Knight plays Cassie, a role she performed most recently with the Winston-Salem Theater Alliance in North Carolina.

The part reaches back further than that for her. "ACL was one of the first cast recordings that I ever had, and I wore it out listening to it and making up dances in my living room," Knight said.

The roster also includes teachers from Marion City Schools and Pleasant Local Schools, students from Ohio State Marion and Ohio Northern University, and Palace veterans with decades of stage credits between them. Ruby Williams, cast as Tricia, is appearing in her 16th show on the Palace stage.

Three families give the production a multigenerational spine. The director and the choreographer are mother and daughter. Wink's children, Brady and Sadie, grew up on the Palace stage and now share it as Mike and Val, putting three generations of one family on a single production.

The Bairds answer with three of their own: Rick conducts, his daughter Addy Swonger plays Kristine onstage, and his son Parker, a Palace performer last seen in "The Little Mermaid," plays trumpet in the pit below her. A third household completes the pattern — vocal director Jami Rawlins and Dustin Rawlins, the production's Al, are married, and their children have grown up on the Palace stage with many productions of their own behind them.

Baird's own Palace history runs deeper still. He has played in the pit since the 1970s, a tenure reaching back nearly to the reopening the theatre celebrates Friday night, and he held the podium for last summer's "Annie" and the theatre's 2021 "Happy Days, the New Musical." Patrons may recognize him from his day job as the theatre's box office coordinator.

Kathy Hill is the rehearsal and orchestra accompanist; Hill has run a piano studio in Marion since 1981 and has worked with Broadway choreographers, including Thommie Walsh — a member of the original 1975 "A Chorus Line" cast. Susan Wenig directs costumes. Barb Yaksic, involved with Palace productions since 2000, manages the stage, with Rhonda Arnold serving as assistant stage manager. Joy Watkins, who has worked on Palace sets and props since 2008, rounds out the crew.

Tickets run $10 for students with ID, then $16, $25 and $28, with the $55 Patron Ticket available for opening night. The theatre adds a $3 restoration fee to every ticket. Tickets are on sale now at ci.ovationtix.com/37024/production/1273142, and 3D Private Wealth Advisors sponsors the production. The box office sits at the east end of the building at 270 W. Center St., at the corner of Center and Campbell streets, and is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, plus one hour before all events.

Patrons can call (740) 383-2101 or email info@marionpalace.org.

Parking is simpler than most downtown venues can claim. The Palace offers a free lot behind the theatre off Campbell Street, with a smaller west-side lot reserved for accessible parking, and city and street parking sit nearby. Patrons who need wheelchair-accessible seating should notify the box office when buying tickets; the house includes 20 wheelchair platform areas, and assisted listening devices are available first come, first served.

Outside food and drink are not permitted, though concessions are sold inside.

Sunday's 2 p.m. matinee closes the run.

THE CAST

Zach – Kain Anderson | Larry – Justin Adams | Cassie Ferguson – Danielle Knight | Sheila Bryant – Amanda Zucker | Diana Morales – Halayna Gray | Val Clark – Sadie Wink | Judy Turner – Sami-Kay Mergy | Bebe Benzenheimer – Kiya Tabler | Connie Wong – Jasmine Ho | Kristine Urich – Addy Swonger | Maggie Winslow – Miranda Werner | Bobby Mills – Andrew Joseph | Mark Anthony – Andrew Holmes | Mike Costa – Brady Wink | Richie Walters – Noah Williams | Al Deluca – Dustin Rawlins | Paul San Marco – Ezakaya Salazar | Don Kerr – Kendell Edgerton | Gregory Gardener – Ryan Howard | Lois Dilettente – Katelyn Wicker | Vicki Bickers – Abigail Bennett | Tricia – Ruby Williams | Ensemble – Valerie Dunmire, Olivia Brazell, Sara Grote

Photo Gallery