Review #1 of 2: CHICAGO by 2022 touring company
by Michael Meigs
Why should one bother to see yet another production of Chicago? The musical debuted nearly fifty years ago, in 1975; the film came out in 2002; and the work long ago proliferated among regional, community, educational, and even kiddie theatre companies. CTXLiveTheatre records ten productions of Chicago across the region, including a 2013 national tour, versions by Austin Playhouse, the Georgetown Palace, San Antonio's NESA high school arts program, and even a 2016 staging by KidsActing of Austin. Why is this work filling the 2900-seat Bass Concert Hall all this week?
First, it's a fantasy of being bad and gloriously getting away with it. Second, Chicago lovingly revives the tradition of wacky vaudeville, complete with goofy characters, déshabillée dames dressed in glitter, hotbody male dancers, derby hats, bowties and bibs, canes, feather fan dances, innuendo and limelight glory for the leads. Chicago is pure wish fulfillment, candy for the id, a glorious denial of adult responsibility, self-restraint, and punishment.
Third, a far more important reason, is that this touring production re-creates the original direction and choreography by Bob Fosse (1975) and choreography by Ann Reinking (1996), who had appeared as Roxy Hart in the original. Reinking's associate Gary Chryst did this tour's choreography (yet another Chicago in his long resumé), and Tania Nardini re-created the direction. The tour is as close as you can get to the original production without using a time-traveling Delorean.
All the familiar fun is there, but seeing it live on a big stage in a huge hall adds the perhaps unexpected delight of witnessing what vaudeville must have been in its heyday in the decades of the 1920's and 30's -- the very period in which the story is set. Once the women's murders have been recounted as comedy in the Cell Block Tango, the characters' thrust is toward stage stardom. What more satisfying outcome could there be for the two innocently guilty murderesses than becoming darlings of the limelight?
Fiction blends with fact, if you think about it. This cast of twenty-two is pursuing exactly that dream. Setting aside the talented funny-shaped comics in clown roles (Brian Kalinowski as credulous husband Amos, Christina Wells as Matron Big Mama Morton, and G.A. James as reporter Mary Sunshine), these performers are without other exception keen, ambitious, fit, lithe, disciplined, physically attractive, and confident. Touring life burns bright but does not last. This tour stopped in San Antonio's Majestic Theatre last week; after six days and seven performances here in Austin, their relentless route takes them to Fayetteville, Arkansas; Washington, DC; Sarasota, Florida; and Waterbury, Connecticut. After a one-month break, they're back on the road again until late May.
Audience reaction at Bass Concert Hall suggests the enormous lift the cast and ten musicians must be receiving in order to keep delivering the exacting, beaming performances of this show's challenging choreography and music. Waves of applause and approval regularly rolled forward to the stage, beginning in the cheap seats way up high and subsiding in the expensive front rows. Nobody had to decipher this story. They'd probably seen Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger in the movie, and they were more than eager to embrace tall, vibrant brunette Logan Floyd as wicked Velma Kelly and Katie Frieden as new-to-the-pokey redhead Roxy Hart.
Fosse's distinctive choreography of quirky moves, vaudeville turns, and leggy leaps has impressed itself on musical theatre history. The moving pictures created onstage by dancers in extended numbers are constantly surprising comic animations. In Chicago and other works Fosse evoked the grand old days of vaudeville, as well as the dark times that surrounded them.
Chicago's message: Life is a vaudeville, old chum. Come to the vaudeville!
EXTRA
Click to view excerpts from the touring company's program for Chicago.
Chicago
by John Kander and Fred Ebb
touring company
November 01 - November 06, 2022
November 1-6, 2022
Tue – Fri 8 pm | Sat at 2 & 8 pm | Sun at 1 & 7 pm
Bass Concert Hall | 2350 Robert Dedman Drive | Austin, TX 78712
Tickets go on sale to the general public Friday, August 26, 2022 at 10 am.
Tickets start at $30. Tickets are available at texasperformingarts.org andBroadwayinAustin.com, by phone at (512) 477-1444, or from the Texas Performing Arts ticket office at Bass Concert Hall.
For groups of 10 or more, call (877) 275-3804 or email Austin.groups@broadwayacrossamerica.com
