The musical “Chicago”, one of Broadway’s most awarded, celebrates Tuesday 50 years of its first version created by Fred EBB and Bob Fosse in 1975, although the current version – the most successful – was a “remake” released in 1996 and since then became one of the most popular works in the disputed New York market.
“Chicago” is based on a play with the same name of 1926, written by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who covered the information of the city courts for the Chicago. This experience served him as inspiration to create this work, becoming his most prominent work.
The plot follows Roxie Hart, a star candidate who ends up in jail after killing her lover with whom she cheated her husband. There, he meets Velma Kelly and other inmates who are accused of killing men for various reasons.
Thanks to their cunning lawyer Billy Flynn, both women are defended in court, and in them they must resort to the lies and manipulation of the narrative and the press in order to obtain their freedom.
Although the work already told in 1927 its first adaptation to the big screen with a mute cinema version, the 2002 film is the best known by having starred in actors such as Richard Gere in the role of Billy Flynn, Renée Zellweger as Roxie and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma. That film won six Oscars, including the best film award.
A Broadway Classic
“Chicago” is the second musical that has been on Broadway the most time, after “The Phantom of Opera”, which makes it a classic that does not go out of style and to which tourists and local go for the glamor of the 20s and the time of jazz, as well as a story that catches the viewer with their sticky songs.
These songs shape the musical and remain in the minds of many even after the curtain fall, as is the case of “All That Jazz” or “Cell Block Tango”, where the inmates relate how they killed their partners, ex -partners and lovers to the rhythm of the chorus: “I had it coming” (“I was looking for it”).
The scenery, despite the glamor of the crazy 20s, is sober and dark, so that the viewer can recreate the Chicago atmosphere of then, as well as the prison where they are, while paying attention to the narrative, the characters and the music.
Throughout their five decades in Broadway, numerous known faces have interpreted the protagonist roles, and among them Liza Minnelli, Pamela Anderson or Melanie Griffith who performed the character of Roxie, or Colman Domingo or Patrick Swayze characterized as Billy Flynn.
Recently, in the attempt to attract the public to the Broadway industry, musicals are opting for stars from the entertainment world to interpret some of the main papers for a limited time in their functions. In recent months, the Colombian singer Sebastián Yatra and the Ashley Graham model have passed through the ‘Chicago’ stage.
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Some of the elements of the musical, such as the power of the celebrities and the unconditional support of the public, the manipulation of the press or sensationalism, are issues that are currently in force and that allow the public to reflect and identify contemporary elements.
The prominence of women is one of the main factors of history in which the opinions and conceptions of the female population and their role in society began to change.
In these specific cases of passionate murders, which were judged with almost exclusively masculine juries, the death penalty used to be imposed, so those convicted were hanging in the gallows. In Chicago, the legend arose that attractive women could not be convicted to die and, in many occasions, they were converted by the press into celebrities and the protagonists of multiple holders.
The musical managed to place the female characters, their opinions and their concerns in the focus of attention so that it invested the predominantly masculine narrative, both on the stage and in the reality of the time.
With EFE information
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