By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
No one knew the power of razzle dazzle more than the team of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb.
In “Cabaret” it is the power to distract from, and soften up the public for the rise of the Nazis.
In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” it is a political prisoner of a totalitarian regime who is distracted in his imagination from the torture around him.
In “Chicago,” crime, specifically women who kill their lovers, provides the razzle dazzle for a public hungry for the next sordid tale.
The plot, concocted by Ebb and choreographer Bob Fosse, is a series of sensational headlines used to stick together a rambunctious score featuring, as the opening number says, “All That Jazz.”
The national touring company production of “Chicago; The Musical” is on stage this weekend at the at the Stranahan Theater, 4645 Heatherdowns Blvd., Toledo. Presented by the American Theatre Guild the musical opened Thursday.
The production continues: Saturday, Jan. 25, at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025 1 and 6:30 p.m. Go to at BroadwayInToledo.com and StranahanTheater.com for tickets.
The show commences with a killing. Clearly this is an open and shut case, but deceit and lust for publicity come together to make sure there’s plenty of gist for a two-hour frolic.
The murderess is Roxie Hart, a chorus girl, who blows away her lover (Brad Weatherford) when he tries to break off their relationship. When her attempt to have her woebegone husband Amos (Andrew Metzger) shoulder the blame fails she admits to the murder and ends up in the Cook County Jail.
There under the conniving matron Mama Morton (Illeana “Illy” Kirven), she joins a cell block full of accused, and by most of their accounts guilty, murderers. The accounts of the crimes committed with shotguns, knives, and arsenic are sung out in high fashion in the “Cell Block Tango.”
Hunyak (Lindsay Lee Alhady) is the exception. She speaks only Hungarian. The only English she utters is “Uncle Sam” and “not guilty.” But as we learn a the cynical tale spins out, being sympathetic in the world of “Chicago” will get you nowhere or worse.
Roxie runs afoul of the celebrity on the cell block Velma Kelly (Ellie Roddy). This new beautiful killer is eclipsing Velma in the tabloids. She’s also distracting the attention of her lawyer Billy Flynn (Connor Sullivan), who specializes in such cases. His callow, duplicitous nature unfolds in “All I Care About is Love” where he’s framed by large feathered fans wielded by his adoring clients.
The show is a spectacle. With the crack 10-piece band in the back of the stage, it looks like a vaudeville act writ large.
.The chorus is clad, barely, in tight leather. It doesn’t matter if they are supposed to be on the police force or one of the press pool.
The exception is the elegantly but demurely clad Mary Sunshine (D. Fillinger) the sob sister columnist with the big operatic voice. She belts out her belief that there’s a “A Little Bit of Good” in everyone, especially women accused of murder.
The sexual energy that fuels the action comes through in the dance numbers. They are muscular, kinetic expressions of passions just barely confined.
This is a world where even a hanging is turned into a number.
The characters reveal themselves in song. Amos sings of being “Mister Cellophane,” clear and invisible to everyone including is wife. But not to the audience. When he makes his final exit, his dignity sort of intact, they give him a rousing ovation.
Mama Morton delivers her philosophy and the rules of the cell block in “When Your Good to Mama.”
Later she and Velma hypocritically, and rather coarsely lament that no one has any “Class” anymore.
This is after Roxie steals the act, shoes and all, that Velma planned to perform for the jury.
The jury is played with gusto by Malachi Alexander who reacts just as Billy Flynn predicted. Then the announcement of the verdict is buried in the tumult as a murder happens right in the courthouse, and everyone rushes out, forgetting the tabloid queen.
ln the end Velma and Roxie are on stage making the best of their fading celebrity. After all is done the band plays on.
I’m left wishing that Ebb, who died in 2004, and his surviving collaborator Kander were still available to deliver their take on the current political circus.
