Chicago (musical)

Velma Kelly is a vaudevillian who welcomes the audience to tonight's show ("All That Jazz"). Interplayed with the opening number, the scene cuts to February 14, 1928 in the bedroom of chorus girl Roxie Hart, where she murders Fred Casely as he attempts to break off an affair with her.

Roxie convinces her husband Amos that the victim was a burglar, and Amos agrees to take the blame. Roxie expresses her appreciation of her husband's willingness to do anything for her ("Funny Honey"). However, when the police mention the deceased's name, Amos belatedly realizes that Roxie has lied to him. With both Roxie and Amos furious at each other for the other's betrayal, Roxie confesses and is arrested. She is sent to the women's block in the Cook County Jail, where several women accused of killing their lovers are held ("Cell Block Tango"); among the inmates is Velma Kelly, revealing herself to have been involved in the death of her husband and sister, though she denies committing the act. The block is presided over by Matron "Mama" Morton, whose system of taking bribes ("When You're Good to Mama") perfectly suits her clientele. She has helped Velma become the media's top murderer-of-the-week and is acting as a booking agent for Velma's big return to vaudeville.

Velma is not happy to see Roxie, who is stealing not only her limelight but also her lawyer, Billy Flynn. Roxie convinces Amos to pay for Billy Flynn to be her lawyer ("A Tap Dance"), though Amos lacks the funds. Eagerly awaited by his all-woman clientele, Billy sings his anthem, complete with a chorus of fan dancers ("All I Care About"). Billy takes Roxie's case before realizing Amos doesn't have the money; to make up the difference, he turns the case into a media circus and rearranges her story for consumption by sympathetic tabloid columnist Mary Sunshine ("A Little Bit of Good"), hoping to sell proceeds in an auction. Roxie's press conference turns into a ventriloquist act, with Billy dictating a new version of the truth ("We Both Reached for the Gun") to the reporters while Roxie mouths the words.

Roxie becomes the most popular celebrity in Chicago, as she boastfully proclaims while planning for her future career in vaudeville ("Roxie"). As Roxie's fame grows, Velma's notoriety subsides, and in an act of desperation she tries to talk Roxie into recreating the sister act ("I Can't Do It Alone"). Roxie turns her down, only to find her own headlines replaced by the latest sordid crime of passion ("Chicago After Midnight"). Separately, Roxie and Velma realize there is no one they can count on but themselves ("My Own Best Friend"), and Roxie decides that being pregnant in prison would put her back on the front page.

Velma returns to introduce the opening act, resentful of Roxie's manipulation of the system ("I Know a Girl") and ability to seduce a doctor into saying Roxie is pregnant; as Roxie emerges, she sings gleefully of the future of her unborn (nonexistent) child ("Me and My Baby"). Amos proudly claims paternity, but still, nobody notices him, and Billy exposes holes in Roxie's story by noting that she and Amos had not had sex in four months, meaning if she were pregnant, the child was not Amos's, in hopes that Amos will divorce her and look like a villain, which Amos almost does ("Mr. Cellophane"). Velma tries to show Billy all the tricks she has planned for her trial ("When Velma Takes The Stand"), which Roxie treats skeptically. Roxie, upset with being treated like a "common criminal" and considering herself a celebrity, has a heated argument with Billy and fires him; Billy warns her that her kind of celebrity is fleeting and that she would be just as famous hanging from a noose. At that moment, Roxie witnesses one of her fellow inmates, a Hungarian woman who insisted her innocence but could not speak English and whose public lawyer refused to defend her, become the first woman to be executed in Chicago ("Hungarian Rope Trick").

The trial date arrives, and the now freshly terrified Roxie runs back to Billy, who calms Roxie by suggesting she will be fine so long as she makes a show of the trial ("Razzle Dazzle"). Billy uses Amos as a pawn, turning around and insisting that Amos is actually the father of Roxie's child. Roxie steals all of Velma's schtick, down to the rhinestone garter, to the dismay of Mama and Velma ("Class"). As promised, Billy gets Roxie acquitted, but just as the verdict is announced, some even more sensational crime pulls the press away, and Roxie's fleeting celebrity life is over. Billy leaves, done with the case, admitting that he only did it for the money. Amos tries to get Roxie to come home and forget the ordeal, but she is more concerned with the end of her brief run of fame and admits she isn't pregnant, leaving Amos in the dust.

The final scene cuts to a Chicago vaudeville theater, where Roxie and Velma (acquitted off-stage) are performing a new act in which they bittersweetly sing about modern life ("Nowadays"). The former Mary Sunshine, revealed during the trial to actually be a man in drag, takes his natural male form as a pushy vaudeville promoter, shaping Roxie and Velma's dance ("Hot Honey Rag") to make it as sexy as possible. The show ends with a brief finale ("Finale").[6]

Source for West End: overthefootlights.co.uk[9]

Principal characters (defined as having at least one featured musical number) and performers of notable stage productions:

• Fred Casely: Roxie's paramour, a furniture salesman. Shot dead at the beginning of the play, he appears in flashback during the trial.
• Katalin Hunyak: One of Roxie and Velma's fellow inmates, who speaks almost no English and is most likely innocent of the crime she is accused of committing. (Her last name Hunyak is an ethnic slur for Hungarian people.) Her hanging sets up the climax of the musical.

• Sergeant Fogarty: Police officer who arrests Roxie and investigates Fred's murder.
• Liz, Annie, Mona and June: Four other inmates who appear only in "Cell Block Tango."
• Aaron: Katalin's indifferent public defender, who prefers to cut plea deals instead of actually defending his clients.
• Martin Harrison: assistant district attorney who prosecutes Roxie. Harrison only appears during the trial but is mentioned earlier.
• Kitty Baxter: An heiress who murders her boyfriend and his two mistresses after finding all three of them in bed together. Her sensational arrest briefly eclipses Roxie's fame similar to how Roxie stole Velma's limelight, inspiring her to create the pregnancy act to regain her status in the media.

The ensemble also calls for a judge, jury foreman, gynecologist, court clerk, newspaper reporters, male sycophants for Roxie and Velma, and other miscellaneous roles, which are usually held as dual roles by other members of the ensemble.

M. O'Haughey as Mary Sunshine and Jerry Orbach as Billy Flynn in the original Broadway cast, 1976

Chicago: A Musical Vaudeville opened on June 3, 1975 at the 46th Street Theatre, and ran for a total of 936 performances, closing on August 27, 1977.[14] The opening night cast starred Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly, Gwen Verdon as Roxie Hart, Jerry Orbach as Billy Flynn and Barney Martin as Amos Hart. Velma Kelly had been a comparatively minor character in all versions of Chicago prior to the musical rendering. The role was fleshed out to balance Chita Rivera's role opposite Gwen Verdon's Roxie Hart.

The musical received mixed reviews. The Brechtian style of the show, which frequently dropped the fourth wall, made audiences uncomfortable. According to James Leve, "Chicago is cynical and subversive, exploiting American cultural mythologies in order to attack American celebrity culture."[15]

The show opened the same year as Michael Bennett's highly successful A Chorus Line, which beat out Chicago in both ticket sales and at the Tony Awards.[16] The show was on the verge of closing, when it ran into another setback: Gwen Verdon had to have surgery on nodes in her throat after inhaling a feather during the show's finale.[17] The producers contemplated closing the show, but Liza Minnelli stepped in and offered to play the role of Roxie Hart in place of Verdon.[18][19] Her run lasted slightly over a month (August 8, 1975, through September 13, 1975),[20] boosting the show's popularity, until Gwen Verdon recuperated and returned to the show. Ann Reinking, who would go on to star in the highly successful 1996 revival[21] and choreograph that production in the style of Bob Fosse, was also a cast replacement for Roxie Hart during the show's original run.[22]

The first West End, London production opened at the Cambridge Theatre in April 1979 and ran for around 600 performances (having debuted at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, on 23 November 1978).[23] It commenced in the West End with most of the Sheffield cast, and was produced by Larry Parnes and choreographed by Gillian Gregory.[24][25] Jenny Logan starred as Velma Kelly, with Ben Cross as Billy, Antonia Ellis as Roxie Hart and Don Fellows as Amos Hart.[26] Ellis (Actress of the Year in a Musical) and Ben Cross (Actor of the Year in a Musical) were nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for their performances, and the musical was nominated as Musical of the Year.[27] Elizabeth Seal later replaced Ellis as Roxie Hart.[28][29]

The original Australian production opened at the Sydney Opera House's Drama Theatre in June 1981. Featuring Nancye Hayes (Roxie), Geraldine Turner (Velma), Terence Donovan (Billy), Judi Connelli (Mama) and George Spartels (Amos), it was a new production directed by Richard Wherrett for the Sydney Theatre Company, rather than a replica of the Broadway production.[30] It transferred to the Theatre Royal in Sydney, before touring to Melbourne's Comedy Theatre, Adelaide's Festival Theatre and a return season at the Theatre Royal, playing until March 1982. Sydney Theatre Company's production also toured to the Hong Kong Arts Festival in February 1983.[31]

The Long Beach Civic Light Opera presented Chicago in 1992, directed by Rob Marshall with choreography by Ann Reinking. Juliet Prowse played Roxy opposite Bebe Neuwirth as Velma. Gary Sandy played Billy Flynn with Kaye Ballard as Mama Morton.[32]

City Center Encores! series presented Chicago in concert in May 1996.[33] The Encores! series, according to their statement, "celebrates the rarely heard works of America's most important composers and lyricists...Encores! gives three glorious scores the chance to be heard as their creators originally intended."[34]

The production was directed by Walter Bobbie with choreography "in the style of Bob Fosse" by Ann Reinking, who also reprised her previous role as Roxie Hart.[33] Also in the cast were Bebe Neuwirth as Velma Kelly, Joel Grey as Amos Hart and James Naughton as Billy Flynn.[33] The show was well-received, with Howard Kissel, reviewing for the New York Daily News writing that "This Chicago impressed me far more than the original.".[35] Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times, wrote " 'Make love to the audience' was another Fosse dictum. That's exactly what Ms. Reinking and her ensemble do. Chicago can still seem glibly cynical and artificially cold, especially in its weaker second act. But these performers know just how to take off the chill."[36] By May 10, 1996, there was talk of a Broadway production: "Down the block, there is a move afoot to move the Encores production of Chicago to Broadway. Rocco Landesman said that he and Fran and Barry Weissler wanted to bring the production to the Martin Beck Theater this summer."[37]

Chicago: The Musical at the Ambassador Theatre, New York, May 2010

Barry and Fran Weissler brought the Encores! production to Broadway, after some revision and expansion, but retaining the spare and minimalist style in costumes and set.[38] The set design includes the presence of the band center stage in an evocation of a jury box, around and upon which the actors play some scenes. There are also chairs along the sides of this central piece, in which the actors at times sit or lounge, when not directly involved in the action. The show opened on November 14, 1996, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre (the same theater where the original production had played)[39] with a script adapted by David Thompson,[40] eventually setting a record for recovering its initial costs faster than any other musical in history, likely due in part to the stripped-down design elements.

Unlike the original production, the revival was met with praise from critics. The CurtainUp reviewer noted, "The show garnered ecstatic reviews, enviable box office sales and enough awards to warrant a special Chicago trophy room."[38] Society had changed in light of events such as the O. J. Simpson murder case, and audiences were more receptive to the criminal-as-celebrity theme of the show.[41]

The revival of Chicago won six Tony Awards, more than any other revival in Broadway history until South Pacific won seven Tonys in 2008.[42] Chicago won for Best Revival of a Musical, Best Leading Actress in a Musical for Bebe Neuwirth, Best Leading Actor in a Musical for James Naughton, Best Lighting Design of a Musical for Ken Billington, Best Director of a Musical for Walter Bobbie and Best Choreography for Ann Reinking.[43] Chicago: The Musical has run for more than 9,000 performances[43][44] and holds the record for longest-running musical revival on Broadway.[45] Ann Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, James Naughton, and Joel Grey returned for cameo appearances.[46]

The cast recording of the revival was released on January 28, 1997, on RCA Victor.[47] The cast recording won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.[48]

Among the many other performers and celebrities who have appeared in the show are Brandy Norwood, Usher, Christopher Sieber, Charlotte d'Amboise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Michael C. Hall, Roz Ryan, Jerry Springer, Brooke Shields, NeNe Leakes, Debra Monk, Patrick Swayze, Kevin Richardson, Gretchen Mol, Rita Wilson, Alan Thicke, Melanie Griffith, Taye Diggs, Erika Jayne, Carol Woods, Chandra Wilson, John O'Hurley, Christine Pedi, Ashlee Simpson, Adam Pascal, Todrick Hall, Amy Spanger, Leigh Zimmerman, Wendy Williams,[49] Samantha Harris, Jennifer Nettles, Marilu Henner, Jeff McCarthy, Norm Lewis, Kevin Chamberlin, Christopher Fitzgerald, Philip Casnoff, Pasquale Aleardi, Ruthie Henshall, Christie Brinkley, Tony Yazbeck, Kara DioGuardi, Sofía Vergara, Mel B,[50] Ryoko Yonekura, Todrick Hall, and Shiri Maimon.[51]

On January 29, 2003, more than six years into its run, the Broadway production moved a second time, to the Ambassador Theatre, where it has played ever since. On November 23, 2014, Chicago became the second longest-running Broadway show, surpassing Cats.[43]

On November 18, 1997, the revival production opened in London's West End.[52][53] Like the New York revival, it was directed by Walter Bobbie and designed by John Lee Beatty, with choreography by Ann Reinking in the style of Bob Fosse.[54] The show ran at the Adelphi Theatre for nine years until transferring to the Cambridge Theatre in April 2006.[55] The original cast of the production included German jazz singer Ute Lemper as Velma, British actress Ruthie Henshall as Roxie Hart, Nigel Planer as Amos Hart, and Henry Goodman as Billy Flynn. The production won the 1998 Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical, and Lemper was awarded Best Actress in a Musical. Both Lemper and Henshall have played the role of Velma on Broadway.

Like its Broadway counterpart, the London production featured many celebrities in the starring roles. For example, Marti Pellow, David Hasselhoff, John Barrowman, Tony Hadley, Jerry Springer, Kevin Richardson and Ian Kelsey have all played the role of Billy Flynn. Maria Friedman, Josefina Gabrielle, Denise Van Outen, Claire Sweeney, Linzi Hateley, Frances Ruffelle, Jennifer Ellison, Jill Halfpenny, Brooke Shields, Sally Ann Triplett, Bonnie Langford, Tina Arena, Ashlee Simpson, Aoife Mulholland, Michelle Williams and Christie Brinkley have all played Roxie Hart. Williams was the first African American woman to play the part of Roxie on the West End stage. James Doherty was a replacement as Amos.[56]

The production moved out of the Cambridge Theatre on August 27, 2011[57] and transferred to the Garrick Theatre on November 7, 2011, starring America Ferrera as Roxie.[54] Robin Cousins joined the cast as Billy Flynn on July 17, 2012. The show closed on September 1, 2012 after a total run of nearly 15 years in London.[58] The UK tour of the production continued after the closing.[59]

To celebrate the 21st Anniversary of the West End revival production, Chicago returned, this time at the Phoenix Theatre opening April 11, 2018, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Billy Flynn, Sarah Soetaert as Roxie Hart, Josefina Gabrielle as Velma Kelly, and Ruthie Henshall as Mama Morton.[60][61] A cast change saw Martin Kemp take over the role of Billy Flynn, with Alexandra Burke as Roxie Hart and Mazz Murray as Mama Morton.[62] Denise Van Outen was announced to take over the role of Velma from 24 September 2018, but due to sustaining a stress fracture in her heel, her integration was delayed until 7 October.[63] The production featured on ITV's reality show, The Big Audition, to cast the replacement Velma. Following multiple rounds of singing, dancing and acting auditions, Laura Tyrer was selected to fill in for the role.[64]

There have been ten North American national tours of Chicago.[65] The first tour started in April 1997 in Cincinnati, Ohio, six months after the revival opened on Broadway. The cast featured Charlotte d'Amboise (Roxie Hart), Jasmine Guy (Velma Kelly), Obba Babatunde (Billy Flynn) and Carol Woods (Matron "Mama" Morton). A second company started in December 1997 in Tampa, Florida.[66] The tour went on hiatus in Fall 1999 and started again in October 1999 in Denver, Colorado, featuring Robert Urich as Billy Flynn, Vicki Lewis (Velma) and Nana Visitor (Roxie).[67][68] The next tour started in October 2000 in Stamford, Connecticut, with Robert Urich. Chita Rivera joined the tour for several weeks.[69]

The 2003 tour started in June 2003 at the National Theatre, Washington, DC, with Brenda Braxton playing Velma, Bianca Marroquin as Roxie, and Gregory Harrison as Billy Flynn.[70][71] During 2004 the tour cast included Alan Thicke and Tom Wopat as Billy Flynn and Carol Woods as Matron "Mama" Morton.[72] The most recent tour started in November 2008 in Charlotte, North Carolina and starred Tom Wopat as Billy Flynn, Bianca Marroquin as Roxie Hart, Terra C. MacLeod as Velma Kelly and Roz Ryan (later replaced by Carol Woods) as Matron "Mama" Morton.[65][73] On January 16, 2012 Peruvian actor Marco Zunino joined the cast as Billy Flynn.[74][75]

On 14 June 2018, the Gordon Frost Organisation announced a revival tour of Chicago commencing early 2019 at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney.[76] The show starred Natalie Bassingthwaighte as Roxie Hart and Casey Donovan as Matron "Mama" Morton.[77] The Melbourne leg of the tour starred Jason Donovan as Billy Flynn.[78] Jason's father Terence had played the same role in the original 1981 Australian production.[30]

On June 4, 2020, it was announced a revival tour of Chicago will open in March 2021. The show will open at the Birmingham Alexandra Theatre on 12 March 2021 and then tour extensively across the United Kingdom.[79]

The first Japanese-language production of the Tony-winning revival of Kander and Ebb's Chicago debuted in October 2008 at the Akasaka ACT Theatre in Tokyo, Japan, followed by an engagement at Osaka's Umeda Art Theatre. Presented by Barry and Fran Weissler in association with Tokyo Broadcasting System, Inc. and Kyodo Tokyo Inc., the b production starred Ryoko Yonekura as Roxie Hart, Yōka Wao as Velma Kelly and Ryuichi Kawamura as Billy Flynn.[80]

In Perú, the musical opened on June 16, 2012 starring Tati Alcántara, Denisse Dibós, and Marco Zunino at Teatro Municipal de Lima in Lima.[81] The show was also staged using a Spanish translation in Costa Rica in 2017 starring Silvia Baltodano and Isabel Guzman.[82]

A French-language production of Chicago, based on the Broadway 1996 revival, opened on September 18, 2018 at Théâtre Mogador in Paris with Sofia Essaïdi as Velma Kelly, Carien Keizer as Roxie Hart and Jean-Luc Guizone as Billy Flynn. Directed by Dominique Trottein with a book translated by Nicolas Engel, this production is choreographed by Ann Reinking and the music was supervised by Rob Bowman. This production will close on June 30, 2019.[83]

The Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, will present an entirely new production of Chicago as part of their 2020 season, the organization was granted new production rights outside of New York or London for the first time in 30 years. It will be directed by Donna Feore.[84]