Culture
All That Jazz at Thirty, Bebe Neuwirth Leads a Chicago Reunion
The original Velma Kelly and Billy Flynn return to the Ambassador Theatre for one November night as Broadway's longest-running show turns 30
A band sitting center stage like a jury box, chairs lined up along the sides, almost nothing else. Chicago has looked like this since 1996, and on Monday, November 16, two of the stars who opened it are coming back to the Ambassador Theatre to remind Broadway who built the house.
It was announced on Thursday that the long-running revival will mark 30 years on Broadway with a one-night-only gala performance at 7 p.m. that evening. Bebe Neuwirth and James Naughton, both members of the original revival company, will lead it. Playbill reported that Robyn Hurder, Whitney Leavitt, Ariana Madix, Alex Newell and Reece Weaver will also appear, and that more celebrity guests are still to be announced.
The money goes to the people who make the show move. All proceeds from the night, Playbill said, will benefit the Entertainment Community Fund's programs serving dancers. The Fund, which used to be called The Actors Fund, has been looking after performers since 1882.
The Velma Who Started It
Neuwirth is the reason a lot of people bought a ticket in the first place. She played Velma Kelly when the revival opened in November 1996 and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for it. She once said the part was so demanding it felt like performing microsurgery from 8 o'clock until 10:20.
She never really left. Neuwirth came back to the production in 2006 as Roxie Hart, then again in 2014 as Matron "Mama" Morton, which made her the first performer to play three different characters at three separate times during a single Broadway run. Most of the country knows her as Lilith from Cheers and Frasier. New York knows her as the dancer who could make a chair look dangerous.
New York knows her as the dancer who could make a chair look dangerous.
Naughton was her Billy Flynn, the silver-tongued lawyer who sings Razzle Dazzle while the courtroom falls for it. He won his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for the role in 1997, seven years after his first, for City of Angels. Seeing the two of them on that stage again, three decades on, is the reason this night exists.
Reality Television Meets the Cell Block
The rest of the lineup shows how Chicago has survived for 30 years. It keeps letting new people in. Deadline noted that Leavitt, best known from Hulu's The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and Weaver, from Netflix's America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, are two of the most recent cast members and have helped drive a resurgence in ticket sales this year. Weaver is the current Roxie. Deadline counted Madix, best known from Vanderpump Rules, along with Newell and Hurder among the former cast members coming back for the night.
The current company plays on around them. Alongside Weaver, the cast features Lissa deGuzman as Velma, Max von Essen as Billy Flynn, NaTasha Yvette Williams as Mama Morton, Red Concepcion as Amos Hart and J. Workman as Mary Sunshine, according to BroadwayWorld.
The rest of the lineup shows how Chicago has survived for 30 years.
Thirty Years and Three Theaters
It is hard to overstate how far this production has traveled from its modest start. Barry and Fran Weissler brought the stripped-down staging over from the Encores! concert series, and it opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on November 14, 1996, the same theater where the original 1975 production had played. It moved to the Shubert in February 1997, then to the Ambassador in January 2003, and has stayed there ever since.
Along the way it won six Tony Awards in 1997, including Best Musical Revival, and a Grammy for its cast recording, BroadwayWorld noted. Directed by Walter Bobbie with choreography by Ann Reinking in the style of Bob Fosse, it is now the longest-running show currently on Broadway and the longest-running American musical in Broadway history. Only The Phantom of the Opera ran longer.
Tickets for the anniversary performance go on sale on Thursday, October 15, at 10 a.m. through Telecharge, or by phone at 212-239-6200. A one-night reunion of the original Velma and Billy, with dancers as the beneficiaries, is exactly the kind of night this show was made for.
Neuwirth has a long history of coming back to the scenes of her old triumphs. She was Lola in the 1994 revival of Damn Yankees, which is headed back to Broadway with a new devil in charge. Read our story on Neil Patrick Harris and the new Damn Yankees.