Christie’s Roxie is lacking Hart
Long on gams and short on stage chops, Christie Brinkley is a Roxie without much moxie in the Broadway hit “Chicago.” The Uptown Girl avoids embarrassing herself in the longrunning musical.
But she doesn’t give a compelling reason to see her in the show that’s been around for 15 years and become an Oscar-winning movie.
There’s ample wiggle room for a performer to put her own stamp on Roxie Hart, the chorus girl who parlays murder and the media into instant fame.
Previous occupants have focused on the character’s vulnerability or va-va-va-voom.
But there’s a vacancy sign over Brinkley’s blank interpretation, and that’s all the more surprising since the model played it last year on Broadway and in London.
She knows her lines but delivers them in a relentless breathy singsong that becomes increasingly wearisome.
Her vocals are in the neighborhood of the notes, but lack oomph and a connection to what she’s singing about.
And her dance steps are well-rehearsed but free of razzle-dazzle. Needless to say the flashy cartwheel in the finale has been cut.
Fellow castmates deserve credit for framing and shoring up their guest celeb, much like the pros on “Dancing With the Stars.”
On Sunday evening, the standing-room crowd met Brinkley — back in the news, thanks to an ongoing war with her ex-husband Peter Cook — with polite applause.
The most enthusiastic reaction came during the rollicking “We Both Reached for the Gun,” a number in which Brinkley, who looks half her 58 years, doesn’t sing. Wearing a blond wig and black mini, she acts like a puppet and mouths lyrics while bouncing on her lawyer’s knee.
Tony Yazbeck plays the shady attorney Billy Flynn and is effective, but could be even more of a snake. Amra-faye Wright makes a sassy and emphatic murderess Velma Kelly. Carol Woods is a soulful knockout as prison matron Mama Morton.
“Chicago” first ran on Broadway in 1975 and proves remarkably prescient about the public’s love for fake celebrities.
The revival’s brightest stars are the irresistibly tangy and hummable songs by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb and Ann Reinking’s tight and evocative Bob Fosse-style choreography.
Brinkley’s Broadway run lasts through April 27, and then she joins the show’s national tour during its Los Angeles run May 15-27.
In New York, meanwhile, “Chicago” goes on. And on. And on.