Received a fantastic e-mail from Steve Kluger, a novelist/playwright I’ve been corresponding with since I reviewed his play After Dark at the New
Conservatory Theatre Center. Kluger’s a wonderful writer — check out his novels Almost Like Being In Love and Last Days of Summer — and he brought his 9-year-old niece up to San Francisco recently to see the Broadway-bound revival of A Chorus Line at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

Here’s what Kluger wrote about the experience:

Having seen various productions of varying quality in the years since the originals took over Broadway, I was hoping for a workmanlike production that would at least stand on its own and honor the legend. What I clearly wasn’t prepared for was having the top of my head taken off just like it was in 1975, when the same 19 characters left me equally incapable of speech once the curtain had come down.

Is this production as good as I think it is? … This is the first time in my musical theatre life that a revival actually defied the axiom “You can’t go home again.” It also confirmed that this f** show’s got a kind of magic that’s never going to be duplicated again.

Hard to disagree with that.

Kluger also mentioned that his new book, tentatively titled The Year We Grew Up, will be released next year by Penguin in hardcover.