After a horrendously cold week, the full house DECC audience was desperately looking for some heat. They found it onstage in the sizzlingly sexy performance of the touring production of the famed musical “Chicago.”
The DECC’s first show in their Broadway season had the enthusiastic audience cheering wildly for the tremendously talented cast, many of them out on their first national tour.
Long before the show’s Roaring Twenties setting, a time before podcasts, TikTok, 24 hour news cycles, and shows like “Dateline,” people had an insatiable interest in sordid crimes. The Prohibition-era public devoured newspaper stories about salacious murders, with even more of a media frenzy ensuing when female criminals were involved.
Real-life accused murderers Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, both charged with killing their husbands, were the “inspiration” for the story of the fictional Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart in “Chicago.” Media sensationalism was front and center even then as Annan, described as “the prettiest woman ever accused of murder”and Gaertner, also considered “too pretty to hang,” were both found innocent.
“Chicago” begins with a member of the ensemble announcing, “You are about to see a story of murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery, and treachery – all those things we all hold near and dear to our hearts.” And from there, the evening of burlesque, vaudeville, and song and dance, immerses the audience in the story of “Chicago’s own “killer dillers, those two scintillating singers” Velma and Roxie.
Soon, the audience is whisked to the interior of the Cook County Jail. Posed alluringly over chairs, “six merry murderesses” each casually explain why she did (or did not) commit the murder of which she is accused in the darkly funny “Cell Block Tango.”
Quickly front and center of the denizens of the jail are Velma (Taylor Lane) charged with the killing of her sister and husband for their illicit hook-up, and Roxie (Ellie Roddy) who admits to shooting her lover for walking out on her.
Both Lane and Roddy are engaging and funny throughout, battling for the attention and adoration of both the audience and their mutual lawyer Billy Flynn (Connor Sullivan).
Lane is a triple threat from her first song, the opening number “All That Jazz.” Acting every inch the narcissist Velma is, and demonstrating her considerable dancing and singing chops, in each song, whether a comic turn or a complaint about her lot in life, Lane is a star. Act Two’s “I Know a Girl” and “When Velma Takes the Stand” also show Lane’s maturity, experience, and depth as a performer.
Roddy too, has wonderful moments to shine, particularly in the hysterically funny “We Both Reached for the Gun,” portraying a ventriloquist’s dummy perched on Flynn’s lap. Roddy brings both the sweet and the not so innocent side of Roxie to life, hitting her stride in “Roxie” a song and dance number with her “boys.”
Lane and Roddy have wonderful song and dance duets including “Nowadays” and their closing number together “Hot Honey Rag.” Their chemistry together is part of the “secret sauce” of the show’s success.
A true leading man in appearance, style, and talent, Connor Sullivan, playing the “silver tongued prince of the courtroom,” Billy Flynn, inhabits the character like a well fitting glove. In his first appearance, “All I Care About Is Love,” surrounded adoringly by a fluttery, feathered fan carrying chorus of women, he brings back glamourous shades of old Broadway.
Sullivan, back for his second tour of “Chicago,” elevated the show with every appearance, whether wheeling and dealing to make money off desperate women, or holding an impossibly long vocal note, much to the audience’s delight, he turned what could have been an unlikeable character into a charming con man.
Playing Matron Mama Morton, another schemer taking advantage of the imprisoned women, Ileana “Illy” Kirven masterfully portrays the undisputed “Keeper of the Keys, the Countess of the Clink, and the Mistress of Murderers’ Row.” Kirven pulls out all the stops, belting “When You’re Good to Mama” so resoundingly that she could have probably reached the balcony without a microphone.
Another of the show’s veteran standouts was Andrew Metzger playing the sad-sack, “aw” inspiring audience favorite, Roxie’s clueless husband Amos. Willing to do anything, including trying to take the rap for her, hocking everything to pay her legal fees, and ignoring her infidelities, Metzger completely inhabits the role of the self-deprecating, befuddled Amos, particularly in his solo, “Mr. Cellophane,” where he laments how people look right through him, never noticing he’s there.
In a smaller role of Mary Sunshine, a tabloid journalist covering the murder trials, D. Fillinger is delightfully over the top with a stratospheric soprano voice who has a hilarious surprise to reveal at show’s end.
The “Chicago” chorus of men and women, playing a variety of roles, singing, dancing, moving furniture and props, and looking gorgeous in the process, deserve special recognition as the heart and soul of the show.
With the iconic Bob Fosse choreography (done for this 1996 version by choreographer Ann Reinking “in the style of Fosse”), the ensemble does Fosse proud.
Right down to Fosse’s group “amoeba” movements in a tight cluster, smooth sideways shuffles, tight shoulder and hip rolls, turned in knees and toes, snapping fingers, and extended jazz hands, the ensemble’s dancing brings much of the show’s heat from start to finish.
Also crucial to the show are the equally hot orchestra under the direction of Cameron Blake Kinnear. Visible front and center onstage, the 10-piece band makes the Kander and Ebb score come to fresh and exciting life, with Kinnear even becoming part of the show’s action at times.
The Orchestra’s “Entr’acte” was one of the evening’s highlights, as they riffed on snippets of the show’s tunes, with the onstage cast and the audience clapping and becoming part of what was played in the style of an impromptu jazz session.
Bravo to the DECC’s management team for bringing Broadway back to Symphony Hall. “Chicago” was a great way for over 2,000 people to experience this bubbly and entertaining national tour in Duluth.
Next up:
Based on the iconic movie with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, the musical version of “Pretty Woman”
Music and lyrics written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance
February 16 at 6:00 pm at Symphony Hall
Tickets available now at decc.org
