BWW REVIEWS: CHICAGO Resurrects Burlesque at Theatre Factory

I've always loved the musical Chicago. Kander and Ebb are one of my favorite composing duos, and Bob Fosse's book with Fred Ebb is a comic masterpiece. But I've always been left cold by Chicago on stage. Most productions tend to ape Fosse's legendary style, and especially focus in on the legendary long-running Broadway revival, with its icy, detached sexuality and almost Brechtian presentation. Unfortunately, that style really does the show as a text no favors, and it's become something of a museum piece, with well-trained but generic dancer-actors grimacing and popping their way through Fosse moves in deadpan. I was pleasantly surprised to see Tom Bekavac and Laura Wurzell's production at the Theatre Factory in Trafford breaking that all-too-common mold. With a semi-pro cast of local character actors filling out the usual suspects, this Chicago is faster, funnier, and dare I say warmer than your average cookie-cutter staging.

Breaking away from the recent tradition of staging the play as a semi-staged "concert with scenes and dances," Bekavac directs the musical in the style of a burlesque show. Every sound is acoustic- neither the performers nor the instruments are miked. The musical numbers are presented more "in story" than the usual detached commentary, and the musicians, locked in a jail cell for most of the show, roam the stage and frequently interact with the actors. In one especially memorable scene, the piano rolls and spins across the stage as the pianist walks alongside it, keeping up with the choreographed movements and playing all the while.

Chicago tells the story of Velma Kelly (Adria Streitman), who kills her husband in a fit of passion, and her prison rival Roxie Hart (Mandie Russak), who kills her lover in cold blood when she is rejected. Both of them are "managed" by corrupt prison matron Mama Morton (Shelly Spataro), who attempts to book them in vaudeville and make money off of their publicity, and both are represented by flashy lawyer Billy Flynn (Jeremy Kuharcik). As they scheme to one-up each other and get away with murder, a sudden change in the Chicago, Illinois legal system leaves both of their fates in jeopardy.

In your average performance, Velma Kelly is the lead role, and Roxie the secondary, but Mandie Russak walks away with the show as newcomer Roxie Hart. Russak eschews the deadpan, stop-and-start monotone that most Roxies adopt, and barely ever attempts the detached Fosse grace associated with the role. Her Roxie is pure impulse with no filter: clumsy, vulgar, sexy, gross and entirely lovable. Russak, a regular in cameo bits and dumb-blonde roles all over the Pittsburgh area, finally gets a leading role tailored specifically to her unique talents, and when the direction allows her to indulge in some decidedly un-Fosse physical comedy, such as her frenetic performance in the trial scene, the energy is palpable. With her knack for landing punchlines, and her instantly recognizable, tunefully nasal singing voice, Russak (who recalls fellow Fosse outsider Christina Applegate in her triple-threat breakout) is the sort of performer roles should be written for.

Adria Streitman's Velma, by contrast, is a more traditional portrayal. Slinky, sultry and deadpan, in any other production, she could have been Roxie OR Velma. Her acting and dancing are more in tune with the Fosse tradition than the rest of the cast, which suits Velma's background as a professional performer. Even her voice has a lower, darker tone, contrasting with Russak's higher, brighter belt pleasingly when the two of them harmonize at the end of Act 1 in "My Own Best Friend." Rounding out the treo is Jeremy Kuharcik's highly unconventional, and hysterical, Billy Flynn. Shattering the convention of playing Flynn as a slick, smart but shady legal eagle, Kuharcik portrays Flynn as all flash and no substance. Loud, unrefined, coarse and not quite as bright as the women he works with, this Billy Flynn, with his sharklike smirk and almost simian body language, seems less a criminal lawyer, and more a "CRIMINAL lawyer," to paraphrase Saul Goodman. His perpetual smirking, swaggering and self-assured jackassery make him the perfect foil to the cynical Mama Morton, played with predatory charm by Shelly Spataro.

The male and female ensemble also add to the burlesque appeal of the show. Given that the female ensemble members have specific roles to play, they are given less leeway to experiment than their male counterparts. The Merry Murderesses are uniformly polished and precise in their dancing and singing, yet in keeping with the production's less robotic feel, the individual characters on Murderer's Row are better differentiated than the Broadway version or film. In particular, Maddie Nick's childlike, almost innocent affect as Mona, and Randi Walker's self-righteousness as Liz, make their characters pop the most during "Cell Block Tango." And one must mention Alyssa Bruno, whose Katalin Hunyak is perpetually kept separate from the rest of the action to emphasize both her innocence and her naivite.

Chicago is always a dark show, where murderers get away with, well, murder, and justice is implied to be a crock. But perhaps this production has taken a few style tips from fellow womens' prison dark comedy Orange is the New Black. Rather than reducing every petty crook and shady agent of justice to a cardboard cutout, a stock archetype, the Theatre Factory's production lets the characters be what they are: characters. Never before has Hunyak felt like a real character and not a plot device, nor has the trial sequence felt like a scene, or a comedy routine, and not a too-on-the-nose burlesque of "THIS IS WHAT YOUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IS." Chicago isn't Mother Courage. It's not even The Cradle Will Rock. And if less people treated it this way, maybe we'd see more vibrant, creative performances like this, and less well-intentioned but stagnant museum pieces. After all, as Velma and Roxie sing, "In fifty years, I know, it's gonna change, I know- but oh, it's heaven nowadays." And at the Theatre Factory, it truly is heaven.

Skidoo. Hotcha. And all that jazz.

Photo Credit: Janine Hribal

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