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Bob Fosse always did black in his own distinctive way -- with an icy touch of class. Yet I wonder if the latest makeover of Chicago, unveiled for the first time at Belk Theater last week, might not cause the late great choreographer to writhe with revulsion.
In the latest incarnation of his scenic design, John Lee Beaty brings the orchestra to a position that dominates the upstage area and surrounds them with a raked golden frame. Musical director Don York and his ample orchestra look like so many knives protruding from a cutlery block. They form an arch over a central staging area where, from unseen chthonic depths, celebrity lawyer Billy Flynn and cipher husband Amos Hart can be lifted into the spotlight -- for entrances on a par with the superstars of Wrestlemania.
Performers don't usually exit to the wings. Instead, there are chairs for them at either side of the gilt cutlery block. These chairs take over the downstage for the famed "Cell Block Tango" -- squish, Cicero, Lipschitz? -- that looks a little less like six caged panthers this time around and more like six arrogant dominatrixes.
Crassness and coarseness seem to be going overboard as this Kander & Ebb skewering of American decadence staggers towards its own decrepitude after a Broadway revival that has just celebrated its 12th anniversary. If all this is going too far for Fosse, then Bianca Marroquin and her Sweet Charity pertness as Roxie Hart was nearly enough to make me forget the slimy slide of this new Chicago. Marroquin's pouty vulnerability and impishness make her irresistible.
Tom Wopat maintains the proper glitter level of Billy Flynn, and Roz Ryan, vamping the audience along the way, brings all the requisite raunch and corruption to Matron "Mama" Morton. Yet each time I behold the slicked-back blond hair of Terra C. MacLeod as Velma Kelly -- and a facial expression that seems contorted with anger even when she's smiling -- Roxie's arch-rival transports me disagreeably back to S&Mville.
I'll confess that even MacLeod wins me over when she teams up Ryan on "Class." Holy crap, what a great Ebb lyric. Chicago remains the finest poke-in-the-eye musical there is -- even if it's trying too hard to keep its edge.
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