From the Archives: A Review of the Revival of 'Chicago' (1997)

Monday's post about Big Stone Gap, which mentioned cast member Jasmine Guy, reminded me about how, in the last years of the last century, I reviewed a musical she starred in: a national tour of  Kander and Ebb's Chicago.

Guy played Velma Kelly in the revival of the Bob Fosse musical, on tour at the National Theatre in Washington in the spring of 1997. Notably, this revival is still playing on Broadway -- a continuous run dating to November 14, 1996, adding up to 7,494 performances as of November 30, 2014.

From the archives, here is my review. It appeared in The Metro Herald in May 1997 and contains some contemporaneous references that may be inscrutable to anyone born since 1994.

My Kind of Town . . . Chicago Is

Rick Sincere

Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Stand aside, Comet Hale-Bopp -- there's a new star rising above the Washington horizon, and she's at the National Theatre! The new star is Belle Calaway, the understudy who took over the key role of Roxie Hart in the new touring company of Chicago, and blew away the crowd on opening night.

Jasmine Guy

Calaway and her co-star, Jasmine Guy, brought the audience to its feet with thundering applause. While Guy slithered sensually across the stage, Calaway exuded energy enthusiastically. A last minute replacement for Charlotte d'Amboise, who is nursing an injury and expected to return to the cast in about three weeks, Calaway evokes the spirit -- and star-power -- of Gwen Verdon, who created the musical role of Roxie Hart in 1975. In fact, Calaway's vocal and dance style nearly replicates Verdon's, a remarkable feat in itself. The question remains: If Calaway -- the understudy -- is this terrific, how good is d'Amboise herself? We'll see in a few weeks.

Chicago features one of the best scores by John Kander and Fred Ebb, who also wrote Cabaret (1966) and the dreadful (but Tony-winning) Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992). Conceived by the legendary director-choreographer Bob Fosse, Chicago is a tuneful and sophisticated musical play. Like Cabaret, it contains hummable and memorable melodies and sharp, crackling lyrics.

Twenty-two years ago, Chicago was shut out of the Tony Awards by A Chorus Line, which at the time was groundbreaking but after its long Broadway run, numerous national tours, and a flop of a movie now seems hackneyed. Despite a respectable run of 868 performances that featured not only Gwen Verdon but the great Chita Rivera (and, succeeding that duo later, Liza Minnelli and Ann Reinking), Chicago had been largely forgotten until an "Encores" concert in New York last year. Its cynical look at the press and judicial system simply did not fit in to American culture at that time. Today -- in the era of two Menendez brothers trials, two O.J. Simpson verdicts, and Court-TV's rising popularity -- it seems more timely and relevant than ever.

This became crystal clear when Billy Flynn, the city of Chicago's hotshot lawyer, first appeared on stage. The National Theatre audience gasped when actor Obba Babatundé strode through the orchestra to sing his first number, "All I Care About [Is Love]" -- for Babatundé bears an uncanny resemblance to Johnnie Cochran, a hotshot lawyer in his own right.

It's difficult to find something not to praise in this production. Ann Reinking's choreography recreates the style of Bob Fosse in a way that deserves hearty appreciation, for the art of the dance has been suffering in recent musicals. (For example, Paper Moon, reviewed favorably in these pages a few weeks ago, had serviceable but unremarkable choreography. This, unfortunately, represents a sad trend in American musical theatre, which was once driven by such creative choreographers as Agnes de Mille, Michael Kidd, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett -- and Bob Fosse.) Fosse's style -- a unique blend of modern dance, ballet, athleticism, and sexual energy -- is often attempted but seldom accurately rendered. It lends itself to injury -- not only D'Amboise, but Reinking herself has been sidelined in recent weeks -- and is perhaps the greatest challenge to a dancer. When it is done right -- as it is done here -- the Fosse style is eye-popping and jaw-dropping. "How do they do that?" comes to mind quite often.

Walter Bobbie, the director, has reconceived the show that builds upon Fosse's original concept and takes it to its logical conclusion. A simple set, which includes the orchestra on stage (a conceit that originated with Cabaret), forces most of the action onto a narrow apron, which makes that action so much more intimate to the audience. Costumes are limited to black, white, and shades of grey. The stage itself is largely black, with a few frames in gold and the glinting gold of the brass instruments complementing the blackness. Props are limited to a few chairs and feathered fans (don't ask, just go see for yourself). Lighting is emphasized, with golden and white pools creating focus and definition.

In its original incarnation, Chicago was billed as "A Musical Vaudeville." Today it bills itself as "The Drop-Dead Broadway Musical." Both are true. Structurally, the play is a series of vaudeville-type numbers, introduced by various characters in the style of a vaudeville emcee. These numbers, however, advance the plot and define the characters as effectively as any written by Rodgers and Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim.

In a nutshell, the plot is this: Chorus-girl Roxie Hart shoots and kills her boyfriend, expecting her Casper Milquetoast husband to take the rap. Instead, she goes to jail and hires Billy Flynn as her attorney, who promises to manipulate the media and the jury to obtain a "not guilty" verdict. Then, as a celebrity murderess, she can go on tour as a -- you guessed it -- vaudeville star. Interacting with Roxie is Velma Kelly (Jasmine Guy), another murderess who has hired Billy and expects the same result. The predatory press itself plays a major role, showing us that not much has changed between 1927 and 1997.

So many performers stand out it is hard to single them out. Carol Woods is at her throaty best as Matron "Mama" Morton, the jail keeper. M.E. Spencer is cloyingly pollyannish as reporter Mary Sunshine. And Ron Orbach is practically invisible -- believe me, that's good -- as Roxie's sad-sack husband, Amos, who does a star turn himself in the amusing number, "Mister Cellophane."

Chicago is not a family musical. It contains adult themes and rough language. It is also a historical landmark of American musical theatre. No one who loves musical theatre can afford to miss Chicago.

Trivia tidbit: the real-life Chicago murder case on which the musical is based (also the basis for the 1942 Ginger Rogers movie Roxie Hart) was covered by a "girl reporter" named Ione Quinby, who later in life was an agony-aunt columnist for The Milwaukee Journal, writing as Ione Quinby Griggs or, simply, "Mrs. Griggs." Whether her choice of a 50-year career as a staple of the back page of the Journal's "Green Sheet" was inspired by the character of "Mary Sunshine" is not known to me.

A Look Back at 'Over & Over'

In my previous post, which was primarily a review of the new production of The Happy Time at Signature Theatre in Arlington, I mentioned in passing -- as did a cheeky Fred Ebb -- Over & Over, the musical version of Thornton Wilder's 1940s play, The Skin of Our Teeth. Signature produced the world premiere of Over & Over in early 1999. Always a troubled show, it had virtually no life after Signature, although a few attempts were made to improve it, even changing its title (to All About Us and reverting, at one point, to The Skin of Our Teeth).

The Skin of Our Teeth had a distinguished pedigree. The original production was directed by Elia Kazan and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. (There were no Tony Awards in those days.) The original cast included Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina, Florence Eldridge and Fredric March as Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, and Montgomery Clift as Henry. Other roles were played by E. G. Marshall, Morton Da Costa (later a distinguished stage and motion picture director), Lizabeth Scott, and Dickie -- the future Dick -- Van Patten. There was every reason to believe that a musical version of Wilder's play would be an artistic and commercial success. While optimism remains, Over & Over -- whatever its iteration -- has essentially been abandoned.

Why this turned out to be the case is explained, at least in part, in my review of the show, which appeared in The Metro Herald (Alexandria, Virginia) on February 12, 1999:

Over & Over: Wilder 3, Adapters 1
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

There have been attempts to adapt three of Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Thornton Wilder's works to the musical stage. The first attempt was made in the mid-50s, with Our Town -- including a television adaptation featuring Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager. It disappeared without a trace. Another musical adaptation of Our Town, called Grover's Corners (by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, creators of The Fantasticks) has been kicking around in workshops for the past several years, but still seems not to have found its audience. The second attempt came in 1964 with Hello, Dolly!, an adaptation of Wilder's The Matchmaker (it, in turn, an adaptation of his own play The Merchant of Yonkers), which was wildly successful, becoming the longest-running musical in Broadway history before being overtaken by Fiddler on the Roof.

Now along come Arlington's Signature Theatre, the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Steel Pier), librettist Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof, Zorba, Carmelina), and a cast and production team heavy with Tony-award winners and nominees. Their challenge: To adapt Wilder's 1942 play The Skin of Our Teeth as the new musical Over & Over. The result: A sense that The Skin of Our Teeth defies musical adaptation.

The material is not inherently unadaptable. After all, as composer-lyricist Maury Yeston (Nine, Titanic: The Musical) has noted, the single theme that runs through every successful American musical play is "optimism in the face of adversity." This is why, he says, a man without a penny in his pocket can sing "If I Were a Rich Man," or, one might add, a little orphan girl in the midst of the Depression can sing "the sun'll come out Tomorrow." And The Skin of Our Teeth is nothing if not a play about optimism in the face of adversity. In three acts, man (in the form of the Antrobus family) confronts The Ice Age, The Flood, and The War to End All Wars. Wilder wrote his somewhat phantasmagorical, anachronistic play just as the Second World War was at its low ebb -- all of continental Europe had fallen to the Nazis, Britain was enduring the Blitz, Stalingrad was under siege, and the U.S. fleet had just been destroyed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. Dark days, indeed. Yet Wilder wanted to emphasize that man had -- has -- an unmitigated capacity to endure.

So it seems that The Skin of Our Teeth has great potential as a musical play. It has colorful, eccentric characters. It has a love-match in George and Maggie Antrobus. It has voluptuous comic relief from Sabina, the maid. Yet somehow, as put together by Signature, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Granted, this is a work-in-progress, and it shows. Surely at this stage of Cabaret's gestation, audiences walked out of the theatre with puzzled expressions, too. There is a lot of promise here, but also a lot of dross.

Director Eric D. Schaeffer has inventively staged the material, and choreographer Bob Avian pulls what he can out of a score that is not particularly danceable. Yet much of Over & Over feels like a magician trying to pull a rabbit out of his hat, only to find a lot of silk handkerchiefs. Above all, the play lacks balance. It teeters one way, then another, yet never settles firmly.

For example, headliner Dorothy Loudon (who created the villainous Miss Hannigan in Annie almost a quarter-century ago) fails to live up to her obvious talents. It is clear from reading the pre-printed program that Loudon's role has been changed considerably from early rehearsals to today. She doesn't even play the role listed in the original program; instead, she has three small parts that are not particularly fitting. In Act Two, she has an amusing but gratuitous specialty number, "This Life," which describes the vicissitudes of being an aging bathing beauty -- and which hits disturbingly close to home for an actress who is clearly being retained in this cast for her marquee value, and not for her particular contribution to the success of the show.

While the play, as written, wants Sabina to be the center of attention, the true anchor, if there is one at all, is Maggie Antrobus, the matriarch played by Linda Emond. Steady, consistent, understanding, unwilling to throw away a line for a cheap laugh, Emond succeeds where the flighty (but talented) Sherie Scott fails as Sabina (in a role intended for Broadway star Bebe Neuwirth, who left during the rehearsal period in New York). Maggie's first act ballad, "He Always Comes Home to Me" clues us in on her character better than any of the other expository numbers, but more than that, it is an excellent song, similar in spirit and tone to Ragtime's "Back to Before," also sung by the Mother. Emond also sings the best single song in the show, "The Promise," in which she reminds her husband of his responsibilities and roles in life.

At the same time, David Garrison's George Antrobus is perhaps a bit too understated. While we want Mr. Antrobus to be an "Everyman," Garrison turns him into a philandering wimp, rather than the strong, confident, elected leader of the vertebrates.

Megan Lawrence is a nicely bratty Gladys Antrobus (carrying a Teletubby doll), while Jim Newman is simply malevolent as her brother, Henry (listening constantly to Marilyn Manson on his Walkman). His number, "Nice People," is biting and sardonic, and it hits hard as it should.

The current closing number, "At the Rialto" (sung by Sabina) is depressingly weak, and it is hard to grasp its connection to what comes before. The creative team simply must look for something better.

Sad to say, despite expectations to the contrary, Over & Over fails to deliver. Given the heavyweight talents behind it -- including 1998 Kennedy Center Honors recipients Kander and Ebb -- some more doctoring may save this play.

The complete run of Over & Over has been sold out since the day the box office opened. Last-minute returns and no-shows may free up seats on the day of performance. Tickets may become available during the hour before curtain. Performances continue through February 21, 1999, at the Signature Theatre, 3806 S. Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington, near the Shirlington exit of I-395. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m.

A Worthy Revival at Signature Theatre

A few years before his death, lyricist Fred Ebb -- who would have been 75 years old this past Tuesday, April 8 -- wrote to artistic director Eric Schaeffer of Signature Theatre in Arlington. In what proved to be a prescient note, Ebb's letter of May 6, 1999, said:

Due to popular Washingtonian demand, I'm including a copy of my first great musical play entitled "The Happy Time." I hope you will spare some of your precious time to read it. After you have finished reading "Come Back Little Sheba" and "70, Girls 70" I would suggest an entire season based on the works of Kander & Ebb, which would end with the return engagement of "Over & Over" for which all of Shirlington is clamoring.

Affectionately signed "Poopsie," this letter suggested what has come to pass this spring at Signature: the Kander & Ebb Celebration, which includes major productions of the Broadway hit Kiss of the Spider Woman, the Broadway semi-flop The Happy Time, and the East Coast premiere of The Visit, based on the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, as well as various ancillary events. (It does not include a "return engagement of 'Over & Over," which was a musical based on Thornton Wilder's play, The Skin of Our Teeth. Watch this blog for an archival post of my review of that show, which Signature produced in 1999.)

The celebration has brought together some of the luminaries of the Broadway musical stage, as evidenced by this "class photo" taken to commemorate Signature's mini-season of Kander & Ebb works:


Sadly, Ebb himself did not live to see this tribute, having passed away on September 11, 2004, before his latest Broadway musical, Curtains, had been completed and opened -- and even winning a Tony Award.

The latest offering in the Kander & Ebb Celebration, The Happy Time, opened in Shirlington last weekend. Here is my review for The Metro Herald:

‘The Happy Time’ Lives Up to Its Title: Signature Produces a Sadly Neglected Musical
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

A shimmering new production of The Happy Time at Signature Theatre in Arlington proves conclusively that this neglected musical is undeserving of its neglect.

First mounted on Broadway in 1968, The Happy Time – with a score by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, and a book by playwright N. Richard Nash – was badly misinterpreted by its director, Gower Champion, who turned an intimate family musical into a spectacular with dozens of happy villagers. Champion did this over the objections of Kander and Ebb who, despite their earlier success with Cabaret, were not yet KANDER & EBB and therefore lacked the clout to overrule the show’s director and its producer, impresario David Merrick.

The Happy Time also suffered from a poorly produced original cast recording, which left out not only some of the loveliest songs of the score – such as the non-love love duet reprise “I Don’t Remember You” – but also the songs that were substantively necessary to understand the show, like the 11 o’clock number, “Running,” and the parenting song “In His Own Good Time.”

The title song was a minor hit for star Robert Goulet, however, and with its lilting, merry-go-round sound left the (mis)impression that “The Happy Time” was all gauzy nostalgia – not exactly what audiences were looking for in the roiling latter years of the 1960s. The show closed after only 286 performances even after winning three Tony Awards and being nominated for seven others.

Consequently, for four decades, The Happy Time has had no Broadway revival and few significant regional productions – until now.

Under the direction of Michael Unger, Signature’s production of The Happy Time moves past all these 40-year-old mistakes and offers up a charming yet serious look at an upper-middle-class Quebec family in 1920.

The set-up is rather simple. Three generations of the Bonnard family live in one big house: widower Grandpere and his son Louis, his wife and three daughters; plus son Philippe, his wife, and son Bibi. A third middle-generation son, Jacques, is a globe-trotting photographer whose arrival back home puts the plot in motion.

Jacques is most delighted to be reunited with his godson, Bibi, a lad of twelve who feels repressed and out-of-place among his family, especially under the discipline of his father, a musical conductor in a burlesque house who – despite his profession – is the most staid and prudish of the Bonnard clan. (Bibi, of course, is no different from any other 12-year-old boy, but he doesn’t know that.)

To say this is a coming of age tale would be to express the obvious, except that it is not so much about Bibi’s coming-of-age as it is about Jacques’. The authors’ task would have been so much easier had they told the story from Bibi’s point of view but instead of this facile path they chose the more complex, layered perspective of Jacques, whose motivations are clouded and whose emotions, at just past 30 years of age, are equally as jumbled as his pre-teen counterpart’s.

Oddly enough, and unusual for a musical of this type and era, the women are more or less pushed off to the side. There are the wives of Louis and Philippe, and there is Laurie, a schoolteacher and war widow who is Jacques’ lost love; yet she seems to be little more than a foil for Jacques who can provide him with some of the impetus to claim his adulthood. Besides these three, you have Louis’ daughters, who do essentially nothing, and the “Four Angels,” strippers in Philippe’s burlesque show, who help provide the setting for Bibi’s sexual awakening.

The Happy Time is a story about male relationships: father and son, brother and brother, uncle and nephew, grandfather and grandson. Jacques wants little more in his life than a sign of approbation from his father, and in seeking independence for himself and for his nephew, he creates a rift between himself and his brother. How these situations resolve themselves is what makes the show go.

Michael Minarik, who plays Jacques, brings a voluble poignancy to the part. (The actor lost his own father within the past year.) At first detached and frivolous, Minarik builds his character arc incrementally, finally exploding with “Running,” a song that can best be described as a forerunner to “Being Alive” in Company, both thematically and musically.

As Jacques’ protégé, Bibi, Jace Casey (who is about to turn 13 in real life) handles a difficult role with poise and charm. The part of Bibi is written about a boy whose voice is still breaking, but the musical numbers assigned to him require a more mature, fully developed voice. Michael Rupert, who originated the role on Broadway, says in a program note that he was 15 when he played it (although his official biographies on IMDB and the Internet Broadway Database both agree he was 16 at the time), so he had to “play younger.” Casey is playing his own age, which is about the hardest thing to demand of an adolescent actor, and he does it well.

At the other end of the age scale, Grandpere (David Margulies) is all impish energy and twinkling eyes. Grandpere has already lived a long life and he has a carpe diem philosophy that extends through his relations with his sons, whom he criticizes for being too sober and serious when life is meant to be lived. (In this, Grandpere bears more than a passing resemblance to a later Kander & Ebb protagonist, Zorba.)

While the book underplays them, one cannot ignore Carrie A. Johnson’s Laurie and Tracy Lynn Olivera’s Suzanne (Philippe’s wife). As Laurie, Johnson helps to ground Jacques while as Suzanne, Olivera stands up to Philippe; both characters are mothers, and both understand the needs of adolescent boys better than the former adolescent boys do.

Director Unger has scaled down The Happy Time so that the book, music, and lyrics are the centerpiece. The set, such as it is, consists of little more than a few chairs, a curtain, and projected images on a screen hanging behind the stage. Just right, to the credit of scenic and production designer Todd Edward Ivins. The costumes, designed by Kathleen Geldard, are mostly in muted tones, with nothing to distract from the action or the words. So, too, Mark Lanks’ lighting design enhances the production without drawing attention to itself.

What may be the best touch is Unger’s choice about the music itself. With a trio for accompaniment (piano, bass, and drums, all under the musical direction of David Holcenberg) instead of a full orchestra, we can hear clearly what the actors are singing and – what’s more, to the pleasure of all – without amplification. It is so rare these days to hear an unmediated human voice in the musical theatre; the absence of body microphones is a welcome lacuna.

The Happy Time is itself a rare thing: a seldom-performed Broadway musical, a family-friendly story, a charmer with heft, a romantic and hummable score. Unless this production begets more revivals – as it should – run now to Signature Theatre to catch a performance before it slips away for another four decades.

The Happy Time is part of Signature Theatre’s Kander & Ebb Celebration, which also includes productions of Kiss of the Spider Woman (now playing in The Max) and the East Coast premiere of The Visit.

The Happy Time continues in The Ark through June 1. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 pm., Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday at 7:00 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. For ticket information, call Ticketmaster at 703-573-7328 or visit www.ticketmaster.com. Signature Theatre is located at 4200 Campbell Avenue in the Shirlington section of Arlington; for more information, visit www.signature-theatre.org.

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Photos, from top to bottom:

"Class Photo" -- From left to right, some of the Broadway luminaries in Signature Theatre's Kander & Ebb Celebration, March - May 2008. First row: Natascia Diaz, empty chair of the late Fred Ebb, Chita Rivera; Second row: David Margulies, John Kander;Third row: Terrence McNally, Eric Schaeffer, Will Chase, Michael Minarik, Hunter Foster, Mark Jacoby, George Hearn. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.

Michael Minarik as Jacques

Jace Casey as Bibi

David Margulies as Grandpere

(left to right) Amy McWilliams, Jace Casey, Kate Arnold (obstructed), Emily Levey, Lauren Williams, Michael Minarik, Carrie A. Johnson, Tracy Lynn Olivera, George Dvorsky and David Margulies in Kander & Ebb’s The Happy Time at Signature Theatre, April 1 – June 1.

All production photos of The Happy Time are credited to Stan Barouh.