Young Performers Challenge Labels With Energy and Charm

More than 50 years ago, the director and choreographer Michael Bennett gathered a bunch of dancers together to discuss their dreams and experiences, including the tough ones. The result was “A Chorus Line,” a show that combined highly personal accounts with an irresistibly catchy score by Marvin Hamlisch and lyricist Edward Kleban; it was anointed a classic in short order, collecting nine Tony Awards, including best musical, as well as a Pulitzer Prize, and enjoyed a Broadway run of nearly 15 years. It seems unlikely that Drew and Lea Lachey’s “Label·less” will enjoy success on a similar scale, but the show has a similar origin story, albeit with younger, greener characters. While leading a theater class at Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Performing Arts, the married artists — Mr. Lachey is a member of 98 Degrees, a boy band popular in the late 1990s and early aughts, and has appeared on Broadway and “Dancing with the Stars,” while Ms. Lachey is a choreographer whose resume includes film, television, and pop music — had students write about not feeling seen, as kids today put it, and the individual struggles that fed this common perspective.Like “Chorus Line,” “Label·less,” now running off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street, is structured around spoken narratives that segue into songs. Here, the former are usually monologues addressed to the audience, and the latter include hits ranging from Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” along with original tunes written mostly by Mr. Lachey and Paul Duncan.For this New York premiere, the Lacheys, who also co-directed the production, with Ms. Lachey serving as choreographer, have recruited a diverse group of bright-eyed, big-voiced performers and drawn on their varied stories. If the result offers a predictable smorgasbord of hot-button concerns, from racism and homophobia to bullying and body dysmorphia, the youth, energy, and talent shared by the cast members mitigate the show’s fundamental earnestness and flashes of banality.Those qualities extend beyond the text and musical numbers to the staging, which has the players exchange hugs and meaningful glances as the torch of confession and lamentation is passed from one to another. Kiwi Villalobos describes being subject to judgement as a Mexican immigrant who has to juggle his studies with cleaning work; Nasir Butler and Cayla Nichole Harris relay the fear and hate they’ve encountered because of their skin color, in a monologue contributed by Maliyah Gramata Jones.The singing is consistently compelling, with Ms. Harris, Paola Marcías, and Colton Smith revealing particularly bright, robust voices. Some other performers serve primarily as dancers, bringing an appealing balance of eagerness to grace to Ms. Lachey’s routines, which sometimes evoke music videos but can also carry unexpected poignance.One of the most moving segments features Kaylee Bays, who uses a wheelchair and performs with other disabled women in a dance troupe cleverly titled The Rollettes. Ms. Lachey gives Ms. Bays able-bodied female partners and provides each woman with an opportunity to fly in her own manner while supporting the others; the effect is at once exhilarating and touching.Towards the end, Micah Day, who sings and plays guitar, and discusses a battle with depression, acknowledges, “It’s possible that some of you might toss aside tonight’s words. Discarding them as fiction or melodrama for the stage.” Indeed, after enduring relentless other accounts of the triggers and microaggressions endured by the generation represented here, it’s perfectly reasonable to approach “Label·less” with some skepticism — and it’s a credit to everyone involved that the production carries as much redeeming charm as it does.

Young Performers Challenge Labels With Energy and Charm

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