Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.
- A Chorus Line is one of the saddest musicals ever made, about the art of making a musical. First you learn everybody's backstory, then you see that all the years, all the physical exertion, all the isolation they put themselves through, amounts to being that fifth dancer in the sparkly spats, doing backup for the main star, absolutely unrecognizable. In addition, after spending the whole play getting to know all 17 of these unique characters, you remember that only eight of them will make the final cut in the end. The others are just unceremoniously sent home, still unemployed, still just as desperate as before, still starving as performers, and rejected after spending over two hours telling the director about themselves.
- The ones eliminated are Don, Greg, Al, Kristine, Bebe, Sheila, Connie, and Maggie, and Paul is disqualified.note The reasons are sad too, since they're largely unrelated to their talent — Sheila is too old (at 29!), Connie is too short, Kristine can't sing. Even those who get in aren't entirely happy stories: Val didn't get roles until she got plastic surgery, Cassie is settling for chorus because she's desperate to dance, and at least one of the trio of Bobby, Mike, and Richie — not bad guys, just somewhat frivolous sorts — gets in because Paul has to drop out.
- Paul's monologue is invariably the saddest moment of the show. A good Paul will make the audience weep.
- Sheila is considered 'old' at almost thirty, and her attitude is one of deep cynicism and weariness. Truth in Television: That is a dancer's life - high burnout rate, early retirement. She doesn't make the final cut at the end. At that point, she's probably ready to just give up entirely - or, on a happier note, become a choreographer herself like Zach, a failed dancer.
- "At the Ballet". Maggie, Bebe, and Sheila sing about how they loved the ballet because their lives growing up were awful, and everything on stage was perfect and beautiful. Sheila's cold, self-absorbed father effectively played on her mother's insecurities that she would end up an "old maid" (at age 22) to get her to marry him and, when Sheila was five, she saw her mother finding the earrings of other women in the car; Sheila's father was clearly much warmer to his trysts than he was to Sheila's mother (or to Sheila, herself), who had given up her career in dance (her main joy) because he wanted her to, and that he often outright said that he'd "married beneath him". Bebe's mother always told Bebe that she would be "very attractive, when I grew up... 'different,' she said, 'with a special something and a very very personal flair'" and, at age 8 or 9, Bebe resented her mother because, even though her mother was trying to comfort her, Bebe could already tell that this was just an effort to spare her feelings since nobody gets called "different" or "special" for no reason, especially when they've been told that they're ugly without affirmations to the contrary; "Now, 'different' is nice, but it sure isn't pretty, 'pretty' is what it's about. I've never met anyone who was 'different' who couldn't figure that out. So, 'beautiful' I'd never live to see". As a result, she only ever felt beautiful as a ballerina. Maggie talks about how her father left after she was born because it didn't change his desire to divorce - her fantasy ballet has her father asking if she'd like to dance. At the very end of the show, all three girls (or two out of three, in the film) are sent home, along with the others who didn't make it.
- "What I Did For Love". Christ. The song was chosen as Marvin Hamlisch's epitaph.Kiss today goodbye, and point me to tomorrow...
- At the end of "Nothing", Diana is depressed because she didn't care that her old abusive teacher Mr. Karp died.
- What happens to her in "Nothing" is also really sad. Diana struggles so hard with the improvisation exercises Karp puts her class through and it's not from lack of trying. She tries so hard...and her reward is not only being criticized by Karp for not going along with the exercise but being teased by her classmates and Karp allowing it. It culminates with Karp telling Diana that she should transfer to a different school because "you'll never be an actress, never!"
- Bobby states that he was Driven to Suicide, but realized killing himself in Buffalo was redundant. If one subscribes to the possibility that Bobby is gay, it's kind of obvious living in the Rust Belt in upstate New York, where he was acting out (breaking into homes to rearrange furniture), was killing him and escaping to New York to be around other gay guys saved his life.
