Is A Chorus Line gospel? Director Bob Avian seems to be treating it as such in the touring production of the Broadway revival, now playing at the National Theatre. This, for all intents and purposes, is the same show that surprised and delighted Broadway audiences back in 1975. No attempts at modernization, no choreographic tinkering. Even the leotards are the same. The loyalty will be appreciated by A Chorus Line purists who never got…

Hot Feet, the new musical with songs old and new by Earth, Wind & Fire making its world premiere at the National Theater, inevitably will be compared to its juke-box-soundtrack predecessors, from the Billy Joel-driven Movin’ Out to the Beach Boys bash Good Vibrations. And while those shows are frequently derided by the theater-snob community, Hot Feet’s curse is that it may not even connect with mainstream audiences: it lacks the guilty-pleasure infectuousness of a…

Is there any working actor with a more powerful, beautiful voice than Broadway’s “Last Great Leading Man,” Brian Stokes Mitchell? The handsome baritone’s performance last night at the Kennedy Center leaves little room for doubt. All gushing aside, Mitchell delivered a wonderful concert, pairing with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by another Broadway great, A Chorus Line’s composer Marvin Hamlisch. Though the pair’s banter was occasionally hokey and strained, this hardly detracted from the…