A new production of classic American musical Chicago is set to razzle dazzle the country. Kirsty Cameron witnessed its scandalous plot being hatched.
Outside it’s raining and bleak, the swoosh of car tyres on wet seal rising from the busy arterial road overlooked by Auckland’s Viva Dance studios. But inside the studio, “the gin is cold, but the piano’s hot … it’s just a noisy hall where there’s a nightly brawl, and all, that, jaaaaaazz”.
“That was great, just a bit more slowly when you put the bottle down. Take your time.”
It’s day three of rehearsals for Chicago the Musical and director Michael Hurst is taking the company through the opening number, All That Jazz. Actor Hannah Kee has an empty bottle to swig from and swatches of tape on the floor to indicate stage dimensions as she sets the scene for the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen [swig, pause], you are about to see a story of murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery – all those things we hold near and dear to our hearts.”
The audience in the dance studio is Hurst, producer Ben McDonald, musical director Paul Barrett, choreographer Shona McCullagh and stage manager Tiumalu Noma Sio. Leads Nomi Cohen and Joel Tobeck, who are not required for the opening number, are also spectators. To Hurst’s cue, the ensemble starts again on All That Jazz. At the next pause, McCullagh tweaks some footwork. “Try to have a tight relationship with whoever your snuggle-puss is,” she suggests as the singing-dancing chorus break apart, reform into sinuous new shapes, pair up – the snuggle-puss part – and separate again.
A month after this, Chicago will open at Auckland’s Bruce Mason Centre. After 12 performances, Chris Reddington’s set and Nic Smillie’s costumes will head to Christchurch for a further 10, then wrap with three showings in Dunedin (venues didn’t align for a Wellington stop). Touring musical or drama productions of this scale by New Zealand companies – there are 17 in the cast and a band of 12 – are a rarity, but advance ticket sales are bearing out McDonald’s expensive punt that audiences in all three cities will want to see one of theatre’s most enduring musicals directed by Hurst and starring both familiar and new faces.
It’s exactly 50 years since Chicago shimmied onto the Broadway stage and it’s barely paused for breath since. With a score by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and choreography by Bob Fosse, the Fosse-directed production ran for 936 performances on Broadway, and from 1979, 600 performances in London’s West End. Revivals in the decades since have been just as successful – the 1996 Broadway production is still packing houses and holds the record as the longest-running American musical. It’s collected Tony and Olivier awards, and the 2002 movie version starring Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones won six Oscars, including for Best Picture.
Based on a 1926 play about true crimes in Chicago, the plot charts the rise, fall and sort of rise again of wannabe starlet Roxie Hart (Cohen) and incarcerated vaudeville star Velma Kelly (Lily Bourne). Abetting/supporting them in their endeavours are silver-tongued lawyer Billy Flynn (Tobeck), jail matron Mamma Morton (Jackie Clark) and Amos, Roxie’s cuckolded husband (Andrew Grainger).
So, how does a satire of Jazz Age fame-hunters, louche lawyers, corruption and biddable media resonate today? Just look around us, suggests Hurst.
“It’s quite prescient in many ways,” he says. “It’s a great time because it’s nostalgic and really relevant, casting a light on all of the cynicism around us, the manipulating of the press.
“Shakespeare wrote that theatre holds the mirror up to nature. It’s a line from Hamlet. It’s the same rationale here – it’s reflecting and showing life for what it is. Isn’t it interesting that Shakespeare wrote that 400 years ago. Chicago is 50 years old, and it’s still relevant. There’s a certain cynicism in this show that really sings,” he deadpans.
This is not Hurst’s first tango with the works of Kander and Ebb. For the Auckland Theatre Company, he directed and took the role of the MC in a lauded production of Cabaret in 2010 (performed in a period-appropriate spiegeltent), and in 2013 staged a steamy Chicago the Musical. That Chicago starred Amanda Billing and Lucy Lawless, inflatable sex dolls and bondage masks.
Audiences and critics applauded. “Hurst once again proves himself an exceptional director of musical theatre, an auteur of clever, sexy noir with strong conceptual vision and stylistic flourish,” wrote reviewer Janet McAllister in the NZ Herald.
“Well, we are keeping to the musical, but it will look different,” Hurst says, a little cryptically, of his 2025 iteration. He won’t be drawn on any return of dancing sex dolls, but does confirm it will have some unexpected elements. What is known is that McCullagh choreographed that production, too, and Andrew Grainger reprises his role as the hapless Amos – his song Mr Cellophane is the show’s tissue-reaching moment. Also returning from that cast is burlesque star/dancer Hannah Tasker-Poland and dance captain Rebekkah Schoonbeek-Berridge.
“The talent of these people!” McDonald exclaims. He’s just finished proof-reading the programme and it’s reminded him of the depth of experience on stage and off. As well as the rich resumés of Hurst (ONZM for services to theatre) and McCullagh (MNZM for dance and a former director of the Auckland Arts Festival), there’s a cast who list West End productions and Netflix shows alongside drama school credentials, local productions and that perennial training ground for many Kiwi actors, Shortland Street.
McDonald didn’t see Hurst’s 2013 Chicago, but he recalls Cabaret with pleasure. “I think it was the best show I have ever seen in New Zealand,” he says. When he acquired the rights to tour a professional production of Chicago – not easy, given the New York-based rights holders see “Australasia” as one market, so NZ will often lose out to Australian companies – Hurst was his first choice as director. “He leapt at the chance to do it again.”
While McDonald has been touring theatre productions for 30 years, it’s his first time working with Hurst, and he’s more than happy. “I think he’s a genius. He’s got this wonderful energy – a ‘what can we do to make this awesome?’”
Where there will be awesomeness, bugle beads and sequins on stage, at Viva rehearsal wear is an assemblage of trackpants, crop tops and various sorts of dance shoes, though one of the chorus is doing her shimmy-shake in Doc Martens.
At Hurst and Barrett’s cue, the company reassembles after a brief break to block out All I Care About is Love, the song that introduces the crowd-playing legal smoothie, Billy Flynn. Turning to face Barrett at his keyboard, the ensemble sing confidentially through a couple of verses – it’s only day three but already scripts are down – while Tobeck paces out the dance moves and sings the first of Flynn’s show-stopping numbers.
“Billy Flynn’s line – ‘it’s all a circus, a three-ring circus’. Well, yeah, that’s what it is,” says Hurst. “Billy sings about ‘how can they see with sequins in their eyes?’
“Oh yes, this is still a play for our times.”
Chicago the Musical is at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland, July 31- August 9; Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch, August 17-26; Regent Theatre, Dunedin, August 29-30.
