"Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads
and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders."
[from "Chicago," by Carl Sandburg]
These lines (uncredited) from Carl Sandburg's 1916 poem open the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of the comedy, Chicago. This isn't the musical currently at the Shubert Theater on Broadway but the 1926 play which was the basis for the musical. Playwright Maurine Watkins was a crime reporter for a Chicago newspaper in the early `20s. She was 30 when the play opened. Two movies were based on the play, including "Roxie Hart," a 1942 picture starring Ginger Rogers. Chicago is a farce about murder. Referring to the movie term "film noir," director Albers says this production attempts "stage noir."
Well, it certainly begins that way. In a near-perfect parody of the genre, Tony DeBruno appears downstage right in trench coat and fedora, beside red-and-blue flashing lights, talking in the florid, pulp-fiction prose of a 1920s private eye. But DeBruno is Jake Callahan, a hard-as-nails reporter for the Chicago Gazette. Callahan's prologue introduces us to Chicago of that day, and to Roxie Hart, (Catherine Lynn Davis), who has shot a man to death in her apartment. Her husband, Amos (Andrew Borba) confesses to the shooting, claiming the man was a burglar. But the plot thickens: Roxie becomes "the most beautiful murderess" in the women's ward of the Cook County Jail. When Roxie protests the title, Jake assures her the odds are 47-to-one she'll beat the rap, and, besides, his stories, are giving her "front page advertisin'." Some things never change.
Chicago recalls the O.J. Simpson and Menendez Brothers cases with its send-up of the publicity angles. William Bloodgood's scenic design provides a sight gag of a jury, which accents that the players in this dark farce are caricatures. Sympathetic characters are almost not to be found. The assistant district attorney, Harrison (Jonathan Adams) is out for a conviction. Defense attorney Billy Flynn (Bill Geisslinger) is out for victory, and then some. Jake is out for a story, and Roxie, with a Hart of brass, is out for all she can get. Davis makes much of the role, showing the essential Roxie as she poses for an act-closing press photo. Roxie's rival for publicity is Velma, an inmate admittedly from the upper crust. Linda Alper, playing her, says, patricianly, "Damn Marshall Field," cursing the department store for sending an empty box instead of the dress she ordered to wear in court. (But Roxie knows the box didn't arrive empty.) As the matron, Catherine E. Coulson represents authority. She wields power over those she can and cultivates those who might do her some good.
Liz (Amy Cronise), "God's Messenger," seems to have flown in from the Cuckoo's Nest. The farce hits everyone, from the judge (Douglas Rowe), to the jury (each one cut out for the job) to the press photographer (U. Jonathan Toppo) and Mary Sunshine (Jodi Somers), the "sob sister" who writes for the Evening Star. While the subject is murder, Albers has directed for the laughs the author wanted. Even then we treated crime as entertainment and criminals as celebrities. Watkins recognized this, and underlined it in the final scene.
And the unattributed Sandburg recognized it. His "Chicago" poem continues:
"They tell me you are wicked and I believe them,
for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer:
Yes, it is true. I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again."
