Play Review: The Musical Chicago

Before one can understand why Bob Fosse has had such an indelible impact on the musical theatre community, one must understand the world that existed before he had stepped into the limelight. The American musical comedy gained international significance during World War I, distracting a run-down theatre-going public with light-hearted sentiments and popular songs “at the expense of a plot” (Acuban). Many shows were musical revues, series of sketches or songs with little to no connection between them, or sentimental operettas that were tailor-made for an audience to digest with ease. The appearance of Broadway’s Showboat in 1927 represented a brief respite from the comparatively frivolous productions of the previous decade, but the lighthearted

Chicago is an American crime musical drama released in 2002 directed by Rob Marshall and starring Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere. The film takes place in 1920s Chicago and tells the story of Roxie Hart, who dreams of being a performer, but has her dreams crushed after she murdered Fred Casely after he lied to her about having show business connections. The main theme of Chicago is that crime pays, which is not revealed to the audience until after the denouement of Chicago, when Roxie partners up with Velma Kelly, a performer is also imprisoned after a double homicide.

In Chicago, the main plot revolves around women who murder the men in their lives that have caused some injustice. Each woman has a story to justify the reason why the men had to die. Billy Flynn is a charismatic criminal lawyer that has never lost a case for a female client. The proceedings in jail and in the courtroom are anything but legal and ethical. It is clear that the plot is not serious. This justifies the fact that the female prison inmates are allowed to interact with each other in song and dance. Also the so-called warden can also act as a contract agent to get the girls their own Vaudeville act. The main purpose of the show is to water down the book plot and add individual entertainers. This is done to integrate the Vaudeville quality within a musical. In doing so the courtroom and jail is paralleled with a nightclub scene. The main purpose to maintain the Vaudeville quality is suggesting the cliché "all the world's a stage." In

Chicago is based on playwright by Maurine Dallas Watkins, who was assigned to cover the 1924 trials of accused murderers Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner for the Chicago

For our critiquing assignment in our Introduction to Stagecraft 1, I ventured to downtown Toronto, to a small indie theatre called, The Unit 102 Theatre. There I saw the production of MISS; written by Dora Award-nominated playwright Michael Ross Albert who wrote such works as Tough Jews, The Spadina Avenue Gang with the Storefront Theatre. The set takes place in the aftermath of a shocking accident in a boarding school classroom, the story explores the tenuous connection between a high school teacher, her fiance, and a troubled student whose lives have been irrevocably changed by tragedy caused by a miscarriage, an affair, and the fear of the consequences that are not yet revealed, and finally, murder. This is a one act showdown between three

In the book, A Long Way From Chicago, by Richard Peck richly illustrates many lazy summers in the years 1929-1942. But here's the thing: Joey and Mary Alice spend the summer visiting their wild grandma in Illinois. It's a long way from Chicago, and a lot different. The small town is country styled, set around the time of World War I. It's the perfect place for a criminal, hence Grandma Dowdel. She pulls pranks (not the usual pull-my-finger but clever, crafty pranks) on a lot of people: she set illegal fish traps right in front of the drunk sheriff who was so embarrassed he didn't punish her, the news reporter (into writing a bunch of lies about Shotgun Cheatham), the banker's wife (into giving her ten dollars, which was a lot of money back

Sunday mornings at House of Blues Chicago are different from most music venues. The House of Blues holds Kirk Franklin’s Gospel Brunch. The inside of the House of Blues is amazing. The lobby walls are filled with famous musicians portraits and American Art. They start opening up the morning by asking questions about the history of the venue. The first House of Blues opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1992. The venues goal is to serve the community while bringing music to the community. They feed the homeless on Thanksgiving Day before opening to the public, and they support local artist, and display their art around the building. In House of Blues Chicago, there are three floors. The restaurant, which is on the first floor. The stage, which

The musical, Shultz explains, was written in the Spring of 1890, and although at the beginning was considered scandalous, it is now considered a classic of dramatic literature, as it has influenced and anticipated a lot of other dramatic forms. It is a very influential play even though not well known to mainstream audiences. At the time of its creation it was very reviled and controversial, and because of that it was not given a sage until 1906 in Berlin. After than, the production was banned in many places until 1974, when in England the

The opening performance of The Addams Family, which was the upper school musical of the year, was that night. The Addams Family was probably the most complex show that we members of stage crew had ever tackled? The show included 10 different eight-foot flats, a full-sized dining room table and chairs, three rolling platforms, and even a fully-operational torture device. Mr. Kupersmith, the play’s energetic technical director, hung the lights, designed the props, and was supposed to help us move set pieces on stage during the show. Now we had to do the musical without him because he had strep throat! I was a freshman at

The wonderful play of Chicago was full of many creative and talented people that helped make the play happen in the first place. Chicago was co-written by the wonderful team of Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. All the music in the play was written by John Kander and the lyrics were written by Fred Ebb.

While the GDS theater program is renowned for taking some great risks in the past by performing controversial pieces that were enjoyed by many, it should not perform Suzan-Lori Parks’ play, Fucking A, for three main reasons. The first issue you would face when putting on Fucking A has to do with the explicit language in the actual title of the play. The second is the toll it would take on some of the students who act in it. And the final problem is censoring all of the horribly vulgar acts that take place in the play.

Through its dynamic directing and acting the show captured the audience and took us to the 1920s City of Chicago. All performs in the production were wearing costumes of black color and the style in the 1920s, along with a simple orchestra in the background, this made clear the setting in which the story takes place. The production is unlike others in that the whole production is made of many smaller simpler acts based of the theater genre called “vaudeville acts”.

Being that documentaries and musicals are both a way of addressing concerns happening in the political, economic or social culture of a certain region, it would seem that there would be many documented cases of how documentaries have impacted the American musical. However, not many results seem to surface when searching for this. For the layperson who does a quick search and does not dig deeper into different ways to search, it may seem that there is only one result: Broadway The Great American Musical by Michael Cantor. Thankfully, that is not the case. There are other sources with information about the film form of the documentary and musicals.

On Tuesday, Nov. 1st me and my partner presented a scene from the female version of the play “Odd Couple” by Neil Simon.

This production ticks every box; from staging to acting, the play is refined down to absolute fluidity. Immersing themselves in the roles completely, the actors in the Old Vic production embody Miller’s characters in ways unparalleled by other performances. Seeing the actors wholly capture the raw emotions of their complex characters brings the play to life, and with their efforts, the audience feels so deeply along with them.