Chicago is an American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Chicago in the Jazz Age, the musical is based on the 1926 play of the same name by Maurine Dallas Watkins, then a journalist covering the city's courthouse beat. A satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice, the plot follows felons who manipulate their stories to develop celebrity status.
The original Broadway production opened in June 1975 at the 46th Street Theatre and ran for 936 performances, closing in August 1977. Fosse directed and choreographed the original production, and his style is strongly identified with the show. The original West End production opened in 1979, running for 600 performances.
The ongoing 1996 revival of Chicago is the longest-running show currently on Broadway, holding the record as the longest-running musical revival and the longest-running American musical in Broadway history. The lengthy run ranks second only to The Phantom of the Opera, having surpassed Cats on November 23, 2014, upon its 7,486th performance.Gans, Andrew. ""All That Jazz": Chicago Becomes Second Longest-Running Broadway Show Tonight" Playbill.com, November 23, 2014 The 1997 West End revival became the longest-running American musical in West End history. Chicago has been staged in numerous productions around the world, and has toured extensively in the United States and United Kingdom. The musical's 2002 film adaptation won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
History The musical Chicago is based on a play of the same name by reporter and playwright Maurine Dallas Watkins, who was assigned to cover the 1924 trials of accused murderers Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner for the Chicago Tribune. In the early 1920s, Chicago's press and public became riveted by the subject of homicides committed by women. Several high-profile cases arose, which generally involved women killing their lovers or husbands. These cases were tried against a backdrop of changing views of women in the Jazz Age, and a long string of acquittals by Cook County juries of female murderers (juries at the time were all male, and convicted murderers generally faced death by hanging). A lore arose that, in Chicago, feminine or attractive women could not be convicted. The Chicago Tribune generally favored the prosecution's case, while still presenting the details of these women's lives. Its rivals at the Hearst papers were more pro-defendant, and employed what were derisively called "sob-sisters" – women reporters who focused on the plight, attractiveness, redemption, or grace of the female defendants. Regardless of stance, the press covered several of these women as celebrities.
Annan, the model for the character of Southern transplant Roxie Hart, was 23 when she was accused of the April 3, 1924 murder of Harry Kalsted (or Kalstedt), who served as the basis for the Fred Casely character. The Tribune reported that Annan played the foxtrot record Hula Lou over and over for two hours before calling her husband to say she killed a man who "tried to make love to her". Her husband Albert Annan inspired the character Amos Hart. Albert was an auto mechanic who bankrupted himself to defend his wife, only for her to publicly dump him the day after she was acquitted. Velma Kelly is based on Gaertner, who was a cabaret singer and society divorcée. The body of Walter Law was discovered slumped over the steering wheel of Gaertner's abandoned car on March 12, 1924. Two police officers testified that they had seen a woman getting into the car and shortly thereafter heard gunshots. A bottle of gin and an automatic pistol were found on the floor of the car. Lawyers William Scott Stewart and W. W. O'Brien were models for a composite character in Chicago, Billy Flynn. Just days apart, separate juries at the Criminal Courts building acquitted both women.McConnell, Virginia A. Fatal Fortune: the Death of Chicago's Millionaire Orphan, p. 62 Fatal Fortune: the Death of Chicago's Millionaire Orphan (books.google), Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005, . p. 62
Watkins' sensational columns documenting these trials proved so popular that she wrote a play based on them. The show received both good box-office sales and newspaper notices and was mounted on Broadway in 1926, running 172 performances. Cecil B. DeMille produced a silent film version, Chicago (1927), starring former Mack Sennett bathing beauty Phyllis Haver as Roxie Hart. It was later remade as Roxie Hart (1942) starring Ginger Rogers, but in this version, Roxie was accused of murder without having really committed it, due to content restrictions on Hollywood films of the era.
In the 1960s, Gwen Verdon read the play and asked her husband, Bob Fosse, about the possibility of creating a musical adaptation. Fosse approached playwright Watkins numerous times to buy the rights, but she repeatedly declined; historian Kevin Boyd Grubb has speculated that, by this point, Watkins may have regretted Annan and Gaertner's acquittals, and felt that her treatment of them should not be glamorized. Nonetheless, upon her death in 1969, her estate sold the rights to producer Richard Fryer, Verdon, and Fosse. John Kander and Fred Ebb began work on the musical score, modeling each number on a traditional vaudeville number or a vaudeville performer. This format made explicit the show's comparison between "justice", "show business", and contemporary society. Ebb and Fosse penned the book of the musical, and Fosse also directed and choreographed.
Synopsis Act I Velma Kelly is a vaudevillian who welcomes the audience to tonight's show ("All That Jazz"). Interplayed with the opening number, the scene cuts to February 14, 1928 in the bedroom of a wannabe star Roxie Hart. Roxie fatally shoots Fred Casely as he attempts to break off an affair with her.
Roxie convinces her husband Amos that the victim was a burglar; Amos agrees to take the blame. Roxie expresses her appreciation of her husband's willingness to do anything for her ("Funny Honey"). However, when the police mention the deceased's name, Amos belatedly realizes that Roxie has lied to him. With both Roxie and Amos furious at each other for the other's betrayal, Roxie confesses and is arrested. She is sent to the women's block in the Cook County Jail, where several women accused of killing their lovers are held ("Cell Block Tango"); among the inmates is Velma Kelly, revealing herself to have been involved in the death of her husband and sister after she caught them having sex, though she denies committing the act on account of blacking out from the sight. The block is presided over by Matron "Mama" Morton, whose system of taking bribes ("When You're Good to Mama") perfectly suits her better-heeled clientele. She has helped Velma become the media's top murderer-of-the-week and is acting as a booking agent for Velma's big return to vaudeville.
Velma is not happy to see Roxie, who is stealing not only her limelight but also her lawyer, Billy Flynn. Roxie convinces Amos to pay for Billy Flynn to be her lawyer ("A Tap Dance"), though Amos lacks the funds. Nonetheless, Billy takes the case. Eagerly awaited by his all-woman clientele at the prison, Billy sings his anthem, complete with a chorus of fan dancers ("All I Care About"). Amos can only raise half the amount Billy demands as a retainer. To make up the difference, Billy turns the case into a media circus and rearranges Roxie's story for public consumption with help from sympathetic tabloid columnist Mary Sunshine ("A Little Bit of Good"), hoping to raise funds by auctioning off Roxie's belongings at inflated prices. Roxie's press conference turns into a ventriloquist act, with Billy dictating a new version of the truth ("We Both Reached for the Gun") to the reporters while Roxie mouths the words.
Roxie becomes the most popular celebrity in Chicago, as she boastfully proclaims while planning for her future career in vaudeville ("Roxie"). As Roxie's fame grows, Velma's notoriety subsides, and in an act of desperation she tries to talk Roxie into recreating the sister act ("I Can't Do It Alone"). Roxie turns her down, only to find her own headlines replaced by a newer sordid and sanguinary crime of passion by a woman (Go-To-Hell-Kitty) who kills her husband and the two women she found with him in bed ("I Can't Do It Alone (Reprise)"). Separately, Roxie and Velma realize there is no one they can count on but themselves ("My Own Best Friend"), and Roxie decides that being pregnant in prison would put her back on the front page.
Act II Velma returns to introduce the opening act, resentful of Roxie's manipulation of the system ("I Know a Girl") and ability to seduce a doctor into saying Roxie is pregnant; as Roxie emerges, she sings gleefully of the future of her unborn (nonexistent) child ("Me and My Baby"). Amos proudly claims paternity, but still, nobody notices him, and Billy exposes holes in Roxie's story by noting that she and Amos had not had sex in four months, meaning if she were pregnant, the child was not Amos's, in hopes that Amos will divorce her and look like a villain, which Amos almost does ("Mister Cellophane"). Velma tries to show Billy all the tricks she has planned for her trial ("When Velma Takes The Stand"), which Roxie treats skeptically. Roxie, upset with being treated like a "common criminal" and considering herself a celebrity, has a heated argument with Billy and fires him; Billy warns her that her kind of celebrity is fleeting and that she would be just as famous hanging from a noose. At that moment, Roxie witnesses one of her fellow inmates, a Hungarian woman who insisted on her innocence but could not speak English and whose public lawyer failed to defend her, become the first woman to be executed in Chicago in decades.
The trial date arrives, and the now freshly terrified Roxie runs back to Billy, who calms Roxie by suggesting she will be fine so long as she makes a show of the trial ("Razzle Dazzle"). Billy uses Amos as a pawn, turning around and insisting that Amos is actually the father of Roxie's child. As Roxie recounts Billy's carefully crafted false narrative of the night of Fred's murder (with Fred re-appearing on stage in flashback), she steals all of Velma's schtick, down to the rhinestone garter, to the dismay of Mama and Velma ("Class"). As promised, Billy gets Roxie acquitted, but just as the verdict is announced, some even more sensational crime pulls the press away, and Roxie's fleeting celebrity life is over. Billy leaves, done with the case, admitting that he only did it for the money. Amos tries to get Roxie to come home and forget the ordeal, but she is more concerned with the end of her brief run of fame and admits she isn't pregnant, at which point a fed up Amos leaves her.
The final scene cuts to a Chicago vaudeville theater, where Roxie and Velma (acquitted off-stage) are performing a new act in which they sing bittersweetly about modern life ("Nowadays"). The former Mary Sunshine, revealed during the trial actually to be a man in drag, takes his natural male form as a pushy vaudeville promoter, shaping Roxie and Velma's dance ("Hot Honey Rag") to make it as sexy as possible. The show ends with a brief finale as Roxie and Velma thank their audience ("Finale").Plot Summary based on that of Bill Rosenfield, copyright 1997 BMG Music
Musical numbers
1975 Original Broadway Production "Chicago: A Musical Vaudeville"
Act 1 "Overture" – Orchestra "All That Jazz" – Velma Kelly and Company "Funny Honey" – Roxie Hart "Cell Block Tango" – Velma and the Murderesses "When You're Good to Mama" – Mama Morton "Tap Dance" – Roxie, Amos, and Boys "All I Care About" – Billy Flynn and the Girls "A Little Bit of Good" – Mary Sunshine "We Both Reached for the Gun" – Billy, Roxie, Mary Sunshine "Roxie" – Roxie and Boys "I Can't Do It Alone" – Velma "Chicago After Midnight" – Orchestra