(The following is by a Buffalo critic and I agree with him--I have seen ACL from the orchestra center, left and right, in box seats, from the mezzanine, etc--my favorite seats are first row mezz which I hope to get in February!!!)

MICHAEL BENNETT was born in Buffalo,
which accounts for the renowned line in another backstage story, A Chorus
Line: “To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant.”

Bennett’s 1975 masterpiece closes Sunday,
Aug. 17, after its successful Broadway revival, and I said farewell to it last
week from an unusual place for a drama critic: I sat in the balcony among what
Dame Edna Everage calls “the poor people.” A Chorus Line’s producer
John Breglio had advised me to watch from there because Bennett always did.
Metaphorically speaking, I was sitting in his aisle seat on the balcony’s second
row—and the outcome was revelatory.

I experienced a different show.

A Chorus Line is, of
course, a love letter to dancers. “I’m a dancer!” insists Cassie, begging to
return to the anonymity of the chorus line. “A dancer dances.” Bennett
himself had been a dancer. And what you see with new eyes from the balcony is
the mirror and the dance and the light.

A Chorus Line famously takes place in a dance
studio where the wrable. Its set is an empty space with upstage mirrors that
appear and disappear and seem to dance, but you can’t see the depth of the stage
from the perspective of the orchestra seats. You miss the full impact of those
choreographed mirrors as well as the dancers. Up there in the balcony, you
experience with a sense of wonder the breathtaking effect of the mirrors that
reflect and double the chorus line.

From a seat in the balcony, in other words, you catch
the true greatness of the legendary show as Michael Bennett staged it, and
preferred to see it.