Murder, greed and all that jazz
‘Chicago’ comes to FLC stage

The cast of “Chicago: The Musical” strikes a pose during a dress rehearsal on Monday. The Fort Lewis production opens this Thurs., March 26 and runs for two weekends./Photo By Stephen Eginoire.

by Judith Reynolds

The America portrayed in “Chicago: the Musical,” which opens this week at Fort Lewis College, resides at the corner of hell and damnation. Dark, crowded and duplicitious, it overflows with people on the run, running a con, and conning every sucker in sight. In fact, Act II opens with the line: “Hello Suckers” – not exactly Welcome Wagon.

A tray of similar cold cuts opens Act I. What appears to be an old-fashioned master of ceremonies walks into a spotlight and says: “Welcome ladies and gentlemen.You are about to see a story about murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery – all those things we hold near and dear to our hearts.”

Welcome to the land of satire. It’s 1926, and last week at the first complete run through of “Chicago,” MC Patrick Wiabel played it straight. He introduces the audience to the Chicago jail where Velma Kelly (Alyse Neubert) and her fellow inmates come out and sing the most famous song in the show, “All That Jazz.” It’s Velma’s take on life and the underlying philosophy of the show.

Velma is a cabaret singer accused of murdering her wayward husband. In crime-ridden Chicago, she’s become a celebrity. Yet all too soon, Roxie Hart (Kelly Zick) enters the cell block and poses a threat to Velma. In a snit over being dumped by her lover, Roxie has murdered Fred Casely (Mike Moran) and threatens to become the next Queen of Crime. Roxie challenges Velma’s position – in prison, in the courts and most importantly, in the media. It’s that confrontation that drives “Chicago,” an unsentimental, acerbic view of American justice and the cult of celebrity.

“Chicago: the Musical” opened on Broadway on June 3, 1975. It marked a dramatic transition away from the sunnier beginnings of the form, as far away from “Oklahoma” as Chicago’s South Shore Drive was from the meatpacking district. “Oklahoma” and its siblings from the 1940s and ’50s have their shadows, but nothing like the Purgatorial atmosphere of “Chicago.” When it opened in the mid ’70s, the highly satirical vaudeville-style musical got mixed reviews and some people walked out, upset by its deeply cynical tone.

Let a little time pass and not surprisingly, “Chicago” has come back. A major 1996 revival and national tour sparked renewed interest. Thirteen years later, it’s not a stretch to wonder why the current climate of bank failures, Wall Street shenanigans and economic malaise make “Chicago” seem so resonant. In 2009, a new Broadway touring production is doing big business. Only last month, the show played to full houses in Denver’s Buell Theatre. Colleges, universities and community theaters get it, too. Further, “Chicago: the Musical” introduces student players to a satirical tradition that goes back at least to 1728 and John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera.” Poking fun at individual foibles and institutions is the stuff of satire, and the “Beggar’s” descendant is as dark as you get these days.

“The whole show is written as a vaudeville entertainment,” Ginny Davis, director, said in an interview last week. “It’s not like the 2002 movie, which most people are familiar with. The movie won the Oscar for Best Picture, but it was very different from the original Broadway show.”

For starters, right up front, the master of ceremonies says what the show’s about: treachery, greed and murder. Furthermore, the live version includes an on-stage band, in this case made up mostly of FLC music faculty members and majors. “There’s tremendous energy on stage,” said Davis.

As for the set, it’s based on scaffolding and very simple, making lighting key, she continued. “We’re going to use headline projections on the back scrim – names from Hollywood, business and politics – Martha Stewart, Gov. Blagojevich and others,” she said. “Just say the name ‘Lohan’ today and watch the reaction … They’ll come and go quickly, but they’re there to set a context. They help us ask: ‘What’s happened to our country?’”

One song, “Class,” Davis said, is the key to the whole show. “It will be new to the audience, because it was cut from the movie version. The song asks: ‘Whatever happened to please and thank you? Whatever happened to fair dealing and pure ethics and nice manners?’ It connects to everything. People coming to see the show who have only seen the movie will get a real taste of the original.”

The original Broadway production has its own pedigree. The musical was based on a 1926 play by Chicago crime reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins. In the 1920s, Watkins covered a rash of murders for the Chicago Tribune. All of the killers happened to be angry young women, but two stood out. Buelah Annan, 23, shot her lover and allegedly played music on her phonograph for hours before reporting the crime. Cabaret singer Belva Gaertner also shot her husband – for having an affair with her sister. Both women became celebrities as a result of sensationalized newspaper reports. On May 25, 1924, Annan was found not guilty. A few weeks later, Gaertner was acquitted. However, other female criminals soon lined up to take their place in the public eye.

Watkins rode this crime wave, turning it into a play about the two murderesses and the smarmy attorney who got them off. The 1926 play ran on Broadway for 172 performances, and the idea of the American celebrity criminal continued to blossom in public imagination – particularly in the movies – first in silent films, then the talkies.

It wasn’t until the late ’60s that the Watkins estate sold the rights of the play to a trio of Broadway veterans: choreographer Bob Fosse, his wife and dancer Gwen Verdon, and producer Richard Fryer. The trio approached composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, already established for creating “Cabaret,” a darkly sophisticated show about pre-World War II Berlin. With Kander and Ebb on board, the ink-black irony of Watkins’ little melodrama deepened. For form and tone, composer and lyricist drew upon the sleazy side of vaudevillian traditions. “Chicago: the Musical” takes the bump-and-grind of striptease and stirs it into a corrupt system of justice. Musically, the numbers derive from popular stage dances of the time – the tango, hat and cane, soft shoe, and Charleston. Choreographer Suzy DiSanto has brought her inimitable jazz style and love of all things Fosse to the show. And with the collaboration of music faculty members Linda Mack, Andrew Homberg and the musicians in the band, this production of “Chicago” ought to draw a crowd of sophisticated theater goers.

Be prepared. •

 

 

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