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If for some reason you haven’t caught one of the 8,221 performances of Chicago since the jazzy, slinky revival opened in 1996, you have no excuse now: Tonight at 7pm the current Chicago cast will celebrate the show’s 20th year on Broadway (a record for American musicals) with a free concert at SummerStage in Central Park. Doors open at 7pm and the show begins at 8pm.
Current cast members performing on this special night will be Bianca Marroquín as Roxie Hart, Lana Gordon as Velma Kelly, Jason Danieley as Billy Flynn, Raymond Bokhour as Amos Hart, Roz Ryan as Mama Morton, R. Lowe as Mary Sunshine and David Bushman, Kelcy Griffin, Donald Jones, Jr., James Lane, Melissa Rae Mahon, Barrett Martin, Sharon Moore, Brian O’Brien, Denny Paschall, Angel Reda, Jason Patrick Sands, Solange Sandy, Michael Scirrotto, Brian Spitulnik, Tonya Wathen, Chryssie Whitehead, with very special surprise guests including a performance from Chicago’s original Billy Flynn, Tony Award-winner, James Naughton.
As we note at our special page devoted to the show: Chicago, Broadway's longest running American musical, was a modest hit when it opened in 1975, in a slinky and sardonic production directed by Bob Fosse with his signature fractured-burlesque aplomb. But this sexy, cynical musical by Fosse and the Cabaret team of John Kander and Fred Ebb—which filters the tabloid tale of a 1920s murder trial through a smeared lens of vaudeville showmanship—was overshadowed at the time by the runaway success of A Chorus Line. It was not until Chicago’s 1996 concert revival at City Center’s Encores! series that the musical became a sensation.
Preserving the sleek presentational style of director Walter Bobbie’s Encores! staging (and choreographed in Fosse fashion by the auteur’s erstwhile muse, Ann Reinking), the revival moved to the Great White Way in 1997 and has sizzled there ever since, nabbing the Tony Award for best revival. It has now surpassed A Chorus Line to become the longest-running American show in Broadway history. An Oscar-winning 2002 movie musical version has added to its appeal to tourists, as has the canny celebrity-casting strategy of producers Barry and Fran Weissler.
In addition to musical-theater veterans—like original cast members Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth and Joel Grey—countless stars have twinkled across its stage in limited engagements, including Melanie Griffith, Patrick Swayze, Brooke Shields, Billy Ray Cyrus and Usher. If some of the production’s razzle-dazzle has inevitably dimmed with age, the constant influx of appealing chorus boys and girls keeps this classic pumping along.