Back in the Roaring 20s, when Bonnie & Clyde were making headlines with their Midwestern romantic rampage of bank robberies and murder, and Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger made a fateful date to the movies with a certain Lady in Red, the corrupt town of Chicago was making headlines for a rash of female murderers (usually killing their husbands and lovers) that captivated the nation’s imagination about the newly emancipated role of American women. Maurine Dallas Watkins, a court reporter at the Chicago Tribune, wrote a satirical play based on her coverage of the trials and of acquitted murderesses Beulah Annan and Belya Gaertner and the shady political and legal system of the day that resulted in their exoneration both in the court and the court of public opinion. Her play Chicago was turned into a 1927 silent movie and later a 1942 remake starring Ginger Rogers as Roxie Hart.
Some forty years later, the play fell into the hands of acclaimed Tony-Winning Broadway dancer Gwen Verdon, who brought the material to the attention of her husband and collaborator Bob Fosse to develop a musical for the stage. Watkins was reluctant to sell the property because it glorified the acquittal of the women, who she felt were guilty. Fosse waited it out, and when Watkins passed away in the early 70s, her estate was happy to make a profit off her work. Fosse and Verdon began developing the property with the musical team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (his collaborators in Cabaret, who did music and book here), framing the story in the guise of a Vaudeville show, since every character is in effect performing their stories to the press and the world. Following on the heels of his 1972 sensation Pippin, Chicago, starring Gwen Verdon as party girl Roxie Hart (based on Annan) and Chita Rivera as hard-as-nails chorine Velma Kelly (based on Gaertner) was the buzz of New York during its development and was poised to be the monster hit of the ’75-’76 season. That is, until a small, independent labor of love by Michael Bennett called A Chorus Line premiered and changed Broadway history. Chicago enjoyed a modest two year run despite the megawatt star power and became a footnote in Broadway history.
Until 1996, when the New York City Center Encores! series revived the piece for a concert. Choreographed by the quintessential Fosse preservationist (and paramour) Anne Reinking, starring herself as Roxie and fellow Fosse protégée Bebe Neuwirth as Velma, told in simple concert form with the bandstand as the only set and sexy black-on-black dancewear as the only costumes, the concert rocked the town and its limited run became the temporary golden ticket. Partly due to Reinking’s valentine to her mentor, partly because it had the good fortune to premier directly on the heels of the two-year mass media circus of the O.J. Simpson trial and acquittal. Suddenly celebrity murders and the absurd press coverage they attain were in vogue again.
The quality and success of the concert, directed by Walter Bobbie, resulted in a transfer to Broadway, preserving the minimalist concert feel and the ability to “sell it with sex”. The revival became the hit of the season and, when The Phantom of the Opera finally dropped its last chandelier spring of 2023, inherited the crown of the longest running show currently on Broadway, showing no signs of abdicating, mostly due to a slew of clever to inspired celebrity stunt casting. When two-time RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon joined the cast for a month as prison matron Mama Morton, sales went through the roof and the 30-year-old show was once again the highest grossing, hardest ticket to get in town.
There are no celebrities on this tour, which has settled into the Hippodrome for a week’s run, but the Fosse energy, spirit, and stylization are intact. The star of this show is the ensemble, who execute Reinking’s iconic dances with all the requisite Fosse pizzazz. Looking amazing in their black mesh costumes showcasing implied and actual flesh, they look amazing contorting themselves into horseshoe-like backbends and layouts as well as all Fosse’s classic isolated body parts. From the minute Taylor Lane ascends from midstage as Velma Kelly to lead “All That Jazz”, the corps mesmerize and seduce the audience for the 2½ hour tale of “murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery, and treachery”, and we hold them as near and dear to our hearts as our emcee promises.
As criminal costars Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, Ellie Roddy and Taylor Lane are solid anchors on which to pin the vaudeville circus. The only mild issue is that, as many of the stunt casts actors today, they are both too young for the characters created for the legendary Verdon and Rivera. Character wise, the story works better when the leads are middle-aged women (there are multiple direct references to aging in Roddy’s centerpiece “Roxie”), but the fact that as women being aged off the stage, they are so desperate to retain their place in the spotlight that they result to murder to stay relevant is a built-in connection. Physically, the fact remains that the roles were never written for singers, but for sublime dancers who could carry a tune and had the star quality to sell a song. All their songs are composed in short phrases that don’t require vocal breathing acrobatics and allow them to perform amazing dance routines instead. More importantly are also written for aging dancers who, in that era, preserved their weight and frames by smoking, resulting in those gravelly, lower-octave, cigarette voices. These ranges are incredibly low for a younger performer who is today trained better as a triple threat, and most likely leading a healthier lifestyle. Lane fares better than Roddy because after “All That Jazz”, the rest of Velma’s set pieces (“I Can’t Do It Alone” and “When Velma Takes the Stand”) are more talk and dance, less singing, and she gets to show off her physical prowess as a dancer. Both however, are funny, engaging actresses who can carry a challenging production number as needed. (Lane deserves credit for getting the evening off to the requisite rousing start with “All That Jazz”, as does Roddy for tackling the never-ending “Roxie” like a champ.)
Connor Sullivan as celebrity lawyer Billy Flynn is the proper mix of arrogance and flash (“All I can say is if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today and had $5000, things would have turned out differently”) that buys the verdict he wants, both in his court and in the audience. Tall, handsome, and possessing a smooth crooning voice, he reels us in with his intro number, “All I Care About is Love” and brings the show home with his 11:00 number, appropriately titled “Razzle Dazzle”.
Illeana “illy” Kirven is a comic standout as the self-serving prison matron Mama Morton, selling the bump and grind, double-entendre filled burlesque solo “When You’re Good to Mama” like Sophie Tucker if she ran Cell Block H.
Andrew Metzger is an audience favorite as underdog Amos Hart, Roxie’s long-suffering, devoted husband who she cons into taking the rap for her murder. Until he finds out that she was humiliating him by having an affair with the so-called burglar she shot in cold blood. Metzger has the audience in his hand already when he delivers the second act showcase number “Mr. Cellophane”, a testament to a man who goes through his life unnoticed. He’s sweet and engaging as a bittersweet, baggy pants Emmett Kelly.
Special note must go to sextet who nail the best-known showstopper in the score, the infamous “Cell Block Tango” sung by the Six Merry Murderesses of the Cook County Jail who are serving time for comically offing their philandering and annoying spouses (but they’re not guilty, “They had it coming.”). These ladies all have character names but are better known by their various complaints: “Pop” (Eliza Levy), “Six” (Christina Youngblood), “Squish” (Angelliz M. Rosado Ramos), “Uh-huh” (Lindsay Lee Alhady),“Cicero” (Velma), and “Lipshitz” (Faith Jordan Candido). Not only are the ladies all hysterical as they recount their tales, maintaining their innocence, but they all have created different personas to deliver the well-known monologs, adding a fresh take to some great 50-year-old jokes. The statuesque redhead Zoie Lee also makes the most of her brief appearance as the next big story, Go to Hell Kitty, a Hawaiian pineapple heiress who gunned down her husband and the orgy she found him in bed with. Even though the leads are all featured well with classic musical moments, Chicago, like any well-designed Fosse musical, is really about the versatile ensemble of everydancers who slink from role to role with terpsichorean sexuality. This ensemble is thrilling and seductive, memorable in the way Fosse intended them to be.
Technically the show is slight by design, having maintained the original concert concept (if it ain’t broke…). John Lee Beatty’s set is simply the black and chrome bandstand that takes up the bulk of the stage and a slew of black cabaret chairs that the ensemble cart on and off to use or sit on the sidelines as observers throughout. It acts as a visual canvas for Ken Billington’s stunning light effects, multiple columns of light that bounce around the stage with the agility of the dancers they are highlighting. Tony Winning Costume Designer William Ivey Long continues to update the sexy black-on-black mesh and lingerie look for his ensemble without losing the sleek lines of his original New York designs. Long flatters every dancer’s flawless physique with looks and cuts that enhances all their best bodily features.
Recreating the work of their Tony Award Winning 1996 predecessors, David Hyslop restages Walter Bobbie’s clever use of space and light and Gregory Butler delivers Anne Reinking’s loving tribute to her mentor’s choreography with exacting precision.
Kander & Ebb’s hot jazz score is still a thrill from beginning to end with all the numbers we’ve come to love, and the on-stage orchestra has a blast performing them. Another special note goes to this evening’s conductor Cameron Blake Kinnear who became one of the corps at intermission, conducting the entr’acte with his own sexy dance moves, deep back bends over his podium and fluid limbs akimbo as perfectly executed as any of the sexy, limber danseurs he conducts for.
I heard audience complaints from folks who somehow have never experienced this fun, jazzed up evening because “there were no costumes and sets”, and it reminded of me on my first viewing back in 1996, on a day I traveled to New York to see Best Musical Winner Rent and Best Musical Revival Winner Chicago, knowing full well I was resentful that they were not employing the visuals of the most stunning decade of that century, cocky that they were just going to “sell it with sex”. I took my seat, attitude intact, and lasted exactly 16 counts of intro before Miss Bebe Neuwirth rose up through the stage and immediately knocked my socks off, as she rouged her knees and rolled her stockings down, selling the show with sex. In the 30 years since, every trip to New York (once again) and every tour (this is the third) lands the same, except I’m already primed to be dazzled. This tour is no different. A headline of the prop newspaper used during the “Roxie” set piece announces “ROXIE ROCKS CHICAGO”. The subheadline, if it were legible from the audience, would read “and Chicago Rocks Baltimore.” Get your tickets to this tale of jazz, liquor, and bedlam as if your life depended on it. It just might.
Photos courtesy of Jeremy Daniel
The show runs 2 hours and 30 minutes with a 15 minute intermission.
Chicago runs through June 8, 2025, at the Hippodrome Theatre in the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center at 12 N. Eutaw Street. For tickets call the box office at 410.752.7444. or purchase them online.