[NEohioPAL] REVIEW: CHICAGO the Musical, at Players Guild Theatre

[Tom Wachunas]

Sizzlin’ Swagger 

By Tom Wachunas

 

   Here’s a curiousprequel to the riotously titillating Players Guild Theatre presentation of Chicago, directed here by Jon Tisevichand, by the way, now sold out for its entire run through April 22.  Even as we of the audience are busy findingour seats in the Guild’s downstairs arena space - and before a scripted wordwas spoken, a song sung, or dance danced – ensemble performers are casuallystretching, bending, pacing, and posing inside the effectively stark setdesigned by Joshua Erichsen. (We would later see them again in the samescenario during the intermission.) Some of them look lost in thought. Somewhisper to each other furtively. Others peer out at us with a lascivious grin,or a yearning glance, or a threatening stare.

    It feels as though they’ve been living therelong before we arrived, caged in a cloudy light behind rows of thick chains hangingdown like prison bars from the ceiling. They seem poised to break out. Andbreak out they do, in a manner of speaking. These marvelously talentedperforming artists, along with the sizzling offstage orchestra conducted bySteve Parsons, go on to topple theatre’s proverbial fourth wall with all theaplomb, polish, and panache you’d see and hear in a Broadway production. 

   This musical ode to1920s Chicago is set against the backdrop of local tabloid headlines screamingscandal and judicial system corruption. It’s a relentlessly biting look atcriminal celebrity wherein we meet Velma Kelly in the iconic introductory song,“All That Jazz.”  She’s a vaudevilleshowgirl confined to the women’s block of Cook County jail, awaiting trial for murderingher husband and sister after she found them together in bed. As we hear duringthe gleeful writhing and stomping of “Cell Block Tango,” performed with severalother “merry murderesses”, they had it comin’.

   Heidi Swinford isdevilishly commanding as Velma. With a strong, dynamic singing voice and dancemoves to match, she gives us a deftly composed portrait of connivingdesperation, driven by a viperous ego colored with gritty sarcasm. Things getdecidedly dicey when another vaudevillian murderer, Roxie Hart, shows up andsteals Velma’s thunder. An equally gifted singer - and electrifyingly lithedancer - Keitha Brown, as Roxie, delivers a compelling picture of giddycomplexity. For all of her fetching naïvete, she’s fiercely determined tobecome a vaudeville star at any cost. It’s a pursuit she brings to light in ariveting confessional soliloquy that accompanies her lusty, slinky chorusnumber, “Roxie (the Name on Everyone’s Lips)”. How can anyone be so decidedlychildish and deliciously malicious at the same time? Fascinating.

   Speaking ofmalicious, Aaron Brown plays the debonair crooner and defense lawyer, BillyFlynn, with memorable relish. He’s a smooth-talking shark, a money-mad,narcissistic media manipulator. One of the evening’s most hilarious scenestranspires in “We Both Reached For the Gun,” featuring the attorney as aventriloquist puppeteer happily pulling Roxie’s strings. 

   Other highlynoteworthy performances include Kathy Boyd as Matron ‘Mama” Morton. She’s theearthy cell-block supervisor who glibly admonishes her residents, “In thistown, murder is a form of entertainment.” With a big heart and infectiousswagger in her voice, she promises reciprocal loyalty in her song, “When You’reGood to Mama.” 

   Meanwhile, on the outside, Allen Cruz iswholly endearing as Roxie’s gentle, neglected husband, Amos. His innocentdemeanor recalls the fumbling awkwardness of a young James Stewart. Hispoignant and funny song bemoaning his social and marital invisibility, “Mr.Cellophane,” is the evening’s most tender moment. And then there’s Micah Harveyplaying Mary Sunshine, a gushy gossip columnist in drag. Miss Sunshine goesunabashedly overboard in her sympathy for Roxie. Harvey sings “A Little Bit ofGood” with all the gut-splitting earnestness of a dubiously-trained sopranobelting out an aria. It may be very bad opera, but it’s gloriously entertainingnonetheless.

Throughout the evening, the choreography by Michael LawrenceAkers is a character unto itself. Akers has successfully melded the jazzyspirit of Bob Fosse with a unique, sensual intricacy that is at times ferocious.

   While Chicagotreads salaciously along a border between satire and parody, somehow it doesn’tfeel right to think of it as mere farcical escapism or irrelevant fiction.Maybe it’s a piquant metaphor. Real life these days seems more than ever drivenby insatiable social appetites for debauchery and scandal, or for therationalizing of our celebrities’ moral turpitude, or the self-congratulatorypleasure we take in witnessing their demise. Is the audience for such things ascomplicit as the perpetrators? Is Chicago,after all, an indictment of all of us? 

   Yikes. Maybe I’moverthinking. Then again, leave it to the supremely skilled artistry present inthis Players Guild Theatre production to offer something so thought-provokingthat it resonates long after we’ve gone home laughing.

   For othercommentaries by Tom Wachunas on the performing and visual arts in the greaterCanton area, please visit his blog, ARTWACH. 

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