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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
‘Chicago’ at the Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Through Sunday. Grade: B -
For a Broadway musical built on windy jazz and illicit nooky, Kander and Ebb’s “Chicago� wallows in contradiction.
The score is rife with flapper motifs, but it’s more about setting a tone than delivering an authentic jazz reconstruction. And if the casting of Velma and Roxie is true to the spirit of the material, the slinky criminals exude all kinds of sexiness but aren’t conventional babes.
This is why the Theater of the Stars production at the Fox Theatre feels so faithful to the vulgar, lived-in contours of the original story. If you come expecting the glamor quotient of Rob Marshall’s 2003 Oscar winner starring Catherine Zeta-Jones (Velma) and Renée Zellweger (Roxie), you may be disappointed.
For Terra C. MacLeod’s Velma is used up and brash. Michelle DeJean’s Roxie is several spa-years short of petite. And the whole chorus looks dangerously pale, thin and out of gas. (That’s a compliment. Sort of.)
This appropriately haggard ensemble is what makes John O’Hurley’s turn as Billy Flynn so electric. Flynn may be a mercenary, headline-hogging criminal attorney, but the former “Seinfeld� star plays him as a elegant, silver-crested dandy with the crooning style of Fred Astaire. In this ensemble, he is unique in that his sound is of the period. On the comedic side, you’ll never see a smarmier Flynn, who exists to look down his nose. Completely surrounded by girls and swaddled in white feathers (“All I Care About�), he makes us wonder what’s going on under there. Brilliant.
With his oversize sweater and slouching posture, Kevin Carolan’s Amos Hart is a little heavy on the sadsack shtick. And though Carol Lee’s Matron “Mama� Morton can be a commanding presence, her movement, such as it is, seems oddly off-kilter. The clawlike gesture she makes with her hands doesn’t match her dynamic singing voice.
The word on Peachtree after Tuesday night’s opening was that DeJean’s Roxie takes a little getting used to. Fair enough. DeJean may not be a petite blonde, and scaling a ladder is not her strong suit. But she’s a superb drunk and a marvelous actress who, in the wink of an eyelash, can go from touching to funny, which is exactly what she does in Roxie’s monologue. Too bad that MacLeod’s Velma doesn’t live up to the promise of fireworks that we glimpse at the top of the night. MacLeod is good at conveying the raw, ragged edges in her character’s personality, but she is less successful at finding the nuance.
This revival production— directed by Walter Bobbie with sets by John Lee Beatty and costumes by William Ivey Long — is now 10 years old. That its actresses can’t get laughs from confessional “Cellblock Tango� is probably a sign that it could use a little freshening up.
But if the show looked in danger of bombing in the first 15 minutes, it quickly snapped to life as soon as O’Hurley took the stage. In the way Flynn manipulates Roxie like a puppet (“We Both Reached for the Gun�), O’Hurley seems to control the indelicate rhythms of this “Chicago.�
When all is said and done, he’s the one with killer instinct.
THE 411: 8 p.m. tonight-Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Theater of the Stars, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St., Atlanta. $20-$62. 404-817-8700, www.foxtheatre.org.
THE VERDICT: Murder never felt so fun.
