![]() ĪNA VILLAFAÑE (Roxie in 2021) This show is still incredibly relevant, especially after the pandemic, when we’ve been living on our phones in a completely different way. We have been really vigilant about this for 25 years, and it was not something that we went talking about, we just did it. You don’t get that with most Broadway shows.īOBBIE I’m very pleased that we’ve never had issues with ethnicity, going back to our first national tour, which was headed by Obba Babatundé and Jasmine Guy. So we brought in Ryoko Yonekura and taught her Roxie, phonetically, and Amra-Faye Wright learned Japanese phonetically and played Velma in the Japanese company. WEISSLER At one point, we wanted to have a Japanese presence in New York, and Japan wanted an American presence in their company. I’ll be starring in a São Paulo production next year, and I know everyone there will relate to its message and humor.īIANCA MARROQUÍN (Roxie in Mexico City in 2001 and on Broadway, on and off, from 2002-2018 Velma on Broadway in 2021) There was a similar case to the plot’s going on in Mexico when I played Roxie there 20 years ago: Gloria Trevi, a pop star who was in jail at the time, popped the big news that she was pregnant - it’s the same thing! When I’d say the line about how I was going to have a baby, people would lose it. People just love the script, and the choreography. PAULO SZOT (Billy Flynn in 20) I saw on Broadway years and years ago, and then, after seeing a production in Paris, knew I had to do it. When Gwen got sick, she expressed that she would like to take on the role, and people ate it up. tour in 1999) Liza Minnelli joined our original production’s cast because she realized it was a wonderful piece, and that it would be great for her. It’s simple: when you’re good to Mama, Mama’s good to you.ĬHITA RIVERA (Velma in the 1975 production, and Roxie on the U.S. It’s lasted this long because its numbers, with great music and stunning dancing, come up very quickly, so if you like musical theater, you’re going to love this. LILLIAS WHITE (Matron “Mama” Morton, jail matron, in 20) The show is very clear you see who’s who, and what’s what, from the very beginning. You could cast a Bulgarian tap dancer as Billy Flynn and, if intelligently cast, it will still be that character, but with whatever personality that performer brings. KANDER No matter how bizarre the casting might seem, it always seems to fit right into our original intentions. And there have been people - even important people in the music world - who couldn’t cut it onstage, so didn’t make it into the show. It’s not a stunt: We don’t take anyone that can’t fulfill the stage work. The onlooker doesn’t believe that a singer like Usher can play Billy Flynn, so they start calling it a stunt. She soon becomes a media spectacle, thanks to her sleazy lawyer, Billy Flynn but her husband, Amos, and the vaudevillian, Velma Kelly - in the same jail as Roxie for double homicide - are none too pleased.īARRY WEISSLER (Broadway producer) The word “stunt” really comes from the unexpected. #Razzle dazzle chicago tv#And the show has continually renewed itself through headline-grabbing cast replacements, which have included Broadway veterans (like Norm Lewis and Jennifer Holliday), singers (Patti LaBelle, Usher and Mel B), screen actors (Brooke Shields and Patrick Swayze) and even media and reality TV figures (Wendy Williams and NeNe Leakes).Īdapted from the journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins’s 1926 play, based on the sensationalist murder trials she covered, the vaudeville-style musical follows the ascent to fame of the down-on-her-luck chorine Roxie Hart after she murders her lover. Six Tony Awards, three Broadway houses, an Oscar-winning film adaptation and over 30 international reproductions later, this Jazz Age satire has become both a cultural touchstone and a New York City landmark. “This new incarnation,” Brantley wrote in his review, “makes an exhilarating case both for ‘Chicago’ as a musical for the ages and for the essential legacy of Fosse.” (The same theater in which the show debuted in 1975, though back then it was known as the 46th Street Theater.) 14, 1996, at the Richard Rodgers Theater. That four-night concert event propelled the show back to Broadway, where the revival opened 25 years ago, on Nov. “The original production was not exactly what you’d call a blockbuster.” The delirious reception to the concert staging was “like ice cubes down your back,” John Kander, the musical’s composer, recalled recently. ![]()
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