| ||||||||||
|
 |
Wednesday, October 5, 2005 Show biz goes behind bars in ChicagoIt became a Broadway staple for years. The 1996 revival rekindled audience fascination with the dark and seedy side of showbiz and is now the longest running Broadway revival.
Michelle DeJean, who plays lead character Roxie Hart, said the tour could potentially stretch on for years. She said she is eager to take this show to audiences across the country. "I don't think this show will ever become dated. It's timeless," she said. DeJean played Roxie on Broadway for the revival of the musical based on Maurine Dallas Watkins' play. Originally directed by Walter Bobbie, Chicago was conceptualized and materialized to be something between a tribute to Brechtian cabaret and a steamy music video. Costumes are dark, dangerous and wicked, make-up is smoky and vampy. The story centers around Roxie on her trip down the cutthroat avenue towards stardom. The journey begins with the spontaneous murder of Fred Casely, a man from a nightclub who promised her stardom to get into her bedroom. Roxie commits adultry with Casely and, once she discovers his game, shoots him down. She pleads innocence when her husband, Amos, returns home, and Amos gladly accepts the explanation. Just as Roxie begins to believe she has escaped conviction for the crime, she is exposed in her lie and forced to head off to jail, where her chance at fame becomes a chance at infamy. While in prison, Roxie meets Velma Kelly. Kelly is a celebrated stage performer who is in prison for eliminating the other half of her sister act. The women are surrounded by merry murderesses who are either either clamoring about their innocence or are hardened criminals who feel their bloodshed was justified. "It's a difficult challenge for me on stage every night to start out the show killing somebody and still get the audience to like me through the course of the show," said DeJean of her character. She spoke during a telephone interview. She said the show appeals to modern audiences who find themselves drawn into court television dramas as well as people who watch continuing news coverage of trials of stars. "There is always going to be an O.J. Simpson or a Michael Jackson on trial that we are obsessed with watching," she said. "Just as much as there will always be adultery or murder or the media blowing up and sensationalizing events. These issues will always be current events. It's always happening outside the theater." The show does not celebrate the darker elements of human nature so much as it parodies them. Lawyer Billy Flynn enters the prison claiming he cares only for justice and truth, but he is a skilled, money-hungry manipulator. In this production, he is played by Tom Wopat. Audiences could remember him from his role as Luke Duke on The Dukes of Hazard. Flynn takes Roxie's case and spins the media into a frenzy, gaining its sympathy as well as that of the nation. Transformed into a big-screen cinematic experience, Chicago reached an even larger audience in 2002 with Rene Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones playing Hart and Kelly. "We have a wide range of audience members and there seems to be a huge fan base of younger viewers," DeJean said of the crowds that she thinks might partly be attributed to the movie's success. "It certainly gave us a boost." DeJean said she has not seen the film, but, from what she hears, it is very close to the stage production musically. "This show is very physically demanding as well as mentally demanding," she said. "Roxie goes from a happy-go-lucky girl to climbing the totem pole to get to the top and comes out a survivor in the end. She starts out so trusting and sweet with a heart of gold and gets herself into a really bad situation." While DeJean said audience members might not leave the theater with a new philosophy on life, they will be in for a visual and musical treat. "The touring cast is a little younger than the Broadway one, so there are some more challenging things that can be done with the cast physically," she said. "The dancing has really been upgraded." Chicago plays at Popejoy Theater in Albuquerque this weekend and kicks off the 2005-06 Ovation series.
|
|
|
||||||
|
||||||||||
