DL Open Thread Sunday Magazine: July 20, 2025
50 Years On, Who Ya Got? ‘A Chorus Line’ Or ‘Chicago’? Back in 1975, or maybe 1976, me and a bunch of my theatre friends went to NYC and saw both ‘A Chorus Line’ and ‘Chicago’ on the same day. ‘A Chorus Line’ at the matinee performance, and ‘Chicago’ in the evening. We were unanimous: We loved ‘A Chorus Line’ with its story of plucky dancers, and pretty much hated the unrelenting cynicism of ‘Chicago’. 50 years later, my perspective has completely changed. NYT theatre critic Jesse Green lays out the 50-year-old debate:
We are in two very different worlds. “A Chorus Line” is psychological, wholesome, sincere; “Chicago” is sociological, jagged, jaded. “A Chorus Line” keens: When one of the dancers injures his knee rehearsing a tap routine, the others sing the wonderfully weepy “What I Did for Love” as a kind of professional obituary. But in cold “Chicago,” with songs like “Razzle Dazzle” and “We Both Reached for the Gun,” the tears are only for show. No one can sing her heart out because no one has a heart.
If we can’t judge the shows by whose world is better — how to compare sweet apples and bitter oranges? — we can ask a bigger question about the birthright of the American musical theater. Which delivered our local art form into the future?
At first it seemed certain to be “A Chorus Line,” and not just because it won nine Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, famously skunking “Chicago.” Nor because the original Broadway production ran for more than 6,000 performances, its first national tour for six years.
Something else favored “A Chorus Line.” Its story of 24 performers auditioning for eight spots in the ensemble of a flashy new musical flattered the hopes as well as the gumption of theater people in a time of commercial collapse.
But if the theater is the whole world in “A Chorus Line” — the stage is literally all you see on the stage — in “Chicago” the opposite is true: The whole world is theater. The book, by Ebb and Fosse, based on a 1926 play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, seeks to literalize the showbizification of American justice by performing it as a series of variety acts.
We are not supposed to care about any of them, only about the world that would turn “two scintillating sinners” into stars. And because we still live in that world — celebrity remaining the best get-out-of-jail-free card — it seems inevitable that the show has proved eternal.
That’s my take as well. 1975: ‘A Chorus Line’. 2025: ‘Chicago’.
Protest And Performance Art–Fighting Against Fascism:
Designer Willy Chavarria’s presentation of his 2026 spring/summer collection in Paris last month began as any other fashion show. The room went dark, and the opening notes of José Feliciano’s version of “California Dreamin’” poured from the sound system. As the lights crept on, a model dressed in baggy white shorts and an oversize white T-shirt strutted onto the runway and knelt. Another model in the same ensemble followed, then another and another. As Feliciano soulfully crooned, “I got down on my, on my, on my bended knees/And I began to pray,” the men had assembled into a kneeling queue, their hands clasped behind their backs. What had started as a fashion show became a performance evoking the scenes of captives at the Salvadoran megaprison called the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT.
Chavarria, a Mexican American designer who hails from California’s Central Valley, told GQ’s Eileen Cartter in advance of the show: “We’re living in a time with the most horrifying atrocities happening all around us and what we’re seeing is the erasure of cultures, the erasure of people, the erasure of education, the erasure of compassion, and the erasure of identity.” After the presentation, some online commenters accused the designer of exploiting the issue, but many more praised him for drawing attention to the plight of undocumented people — who face the prospect of not just deportation but also being dispatched to a foreign prison without due process. Images of Chavarria’s show went viral on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, and became all anyone in fashion seemed to talk about.
This was exactly the point.
‘We’ll Always Have Coldplay’. Sad.
‘We’ll Always Have ‘Play Ball!’ Not sad.
A Chef’s Best-Kept Secret Is–The Ice Tray?:
That was the moment it clicked for me: The humble ice cube tray wasn’t just a freezer accessory. It was a tool of preservation, of intention — a secret little system that made restaurant life smoother and more efficient. And here’s the best part: You don’t need to be running a kitchen to use it that way. Freezing small portions of high-impact ingredients is one of the easiest, sneakiest ways for home cooks to borrow a bit of that cheffy magic. You’ll feel wildly prepared the next time you throw together dinner — and as a bonus, you won’t have to hover over a hot stove in the middle of July to get there.
Intrigued? Read on. Oh, did I mention coffee?
Let’s be honest: In the summer, iced coffee is not just a beverage — it’s a coping mechanism. But watery iced coffee? No thank you. Enter the tray. Freeze your leftover brewed coffee into cubes, then drop them into your next glass for a cold brew that gets stronger, not sadder. This move isn’t just a lazy girl hack—it’s a favorite trick of several coffee pros I know, and these people are very particular about their coffee. You can even freeze sweetened condensed milk, oat milk, or your preferred splash of something creamy to add a tiny indulgence to your caffeine ritual. Add a little cinnamon or vanilla if you’re feeling it. It’s not espresso culture. It’s freezer culture.
Who better to play us out than Albert Collins (only my fave blues guy ever) & The Icebreakers?
