Coming straight to Louisville from a triumphant stay in Japan, the dazzling cast of “Chicago,” now at the Kentucky Center, exhibits no sign of jet lag or lack of energy.
Kicking into high gear with its “All That Jazz” showstopper opening, this “Chicago” is played to the cynical musical hilt by Bianca Marroquin, as Roxie Hart, and Terra C. MacLeod, as Velma Kelly, the Windy City love-nest murderesses turned into celebrities by circulation-seeking newspapers in the decadent 1920s.
Though the show has been running for years in New York and other places (Marroquin is Mexican while MacLeod is French Canadian; they’ve done their roles in their home countries and in New York) it is totally fresh and vigorous in this production with the mesmerizingly inventive Bob Fosse style choreography of Ann Reinking recreated by Gary Chryst. The jazzy orchestra under musical director Andrew Bryan is first rate.
As sleazy criminal lawyer Billy Flynn, former Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson (born in Lexington, KY) is terrific in his ventriloquist routine where Roxie sits on his knee as he pretends to pull strings while she mouths his “We Both Reached For the Gun.” And he’s great in his “Razzle Dazzle” number about life being a circus.
The wonderful Carol Woods is a sensational Matron “Mama” Morton, who looks after the chickies in her care with her lewd credo that “When You’re Good to Mama, Mama’s Good to You.” She can do anything for a price, including publicity help.
Another standout is Tom Riis Farrell as Roxie’s sad sack husband Amos whose “Mr. Cellophane” song about never being noticed by people is superbly and touchingly done.
Woods and MacLeod duet on the hilariously vulgar “Class” with its examples about “nobody having no class these days” while MacLeod and five other “merry murderesses from the Cook County Jail” sing and dance the powerful “Cell Block Tango.” As somebody says, “in this town, murder’s a form of entertainment.”
The brilliant John Kander/Fred Ebb score is packed with other gems — Roxie’s self-serving “Funny Honey,” Billy Flynn’s “All I Care About” (with chorus girls teasingly wielding huge ostrich fans), Roxie and Velma’s “My Own Best Friend” plus their post-prison vaudeville turn with “Nowadays.”
It would be a shame to miss this PNC Broadway Across America show in its short engagement here. Final performances are 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. today.
Charles Whaley is a longtime theater reviewer in the Louisville metro area. He has reviewed stage productions for The Courier-Journal, totaltheater.com, CurtainUp.com, San Francisco Bay Times and The Sondheim Review.
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WHALEY: Don’t miss ‘Chicago’ in Louisville
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