They had it coming
Chicago is finally at the Arkansas Rep, fulfilling late director’s wishes.
So much responsibility sits on the shoulders of the cast, crew and creative team for Chicago, opening this week at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. It’s the first production for the resurrected regional theater since it suspended operations in April. It’s the first production since the death last fall of Rep founder Cliff Fanin Baker. And for the theater going forward, it’s going to have to be an artistic and financial success.
“For me personally, this show is dedicated to all of the Rep friends and family who worked so diligently to save the Rep,” says director and choreographer Ron Hutchins, who stepped in to helm the production that Baker had originally intended to direct himself.
“Most notably it is to honor Cliff Baker, who founded this wonderful theater for us to create art. We are going to give the community a production of Chicago they will never forget.”
The Kander & Ebb musical, set during the roaring Jazz Age-Prohibition mid-1920s, centers on Roxie Hart (Adriana Milbrath), who hopes to parlay her murder of a straying boyfriend — much to the befuddlement of her devoted but clueless husband Amos (Matt Allen) — into fame and fortune. She’s depending on the assistance of crafty, slicktalking lawyer Billy Flynn (Christopher Johnstone) while she fends off her rival, Velma Kelly (Daisy Hobbs), who heretofore has been murder-mad Chicago’s biggest celebrity.
Preview performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday (which is also “Pay What You Can Night,” sponsored by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) and Thursday, with a director’s talk at 6:15 each evening. Opening night is Friday.
Hutchins says he is approaching Chicago wholly as a vaudeville show, “in the style of [original] director/choreographer Bob Fosse.” Those vaudeville elements are particularly on display in the courtroom scene during Roxie’s trial, which is so complex and so dependent on sound effects that he felt he couldn’t “block” it without percussionist Pat Lindsey present. “It’s actually my favorite part of the show,” he says.
He has praise for his “great cast,” a mix of New York actor-dancers and a cadre of locals; for Mike Nichols’ set; and for Trish Clark’s costumes
Hutchins has been involved in nearly two dozen productions at the Rep, dating
back more than two decades, but it has been almost nine years since he was last here, directing and choreographing 2010’s Smokey Joe’s Cafe. He also directed and choreographed 2005’s Ain’t Misbehavin’; he was choreographer or co-choreographer for 2007’s Hello, Dolly!, 2005’s Beauty and the Beast, 2004’s Dreamgirls and Children of Eden, 2003’s Gypsy and Cinderella, 2002’s Cabaret and Annie, 2001’s Anything Goes and 2000’s Blues in the Night and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
He says there’s no particular struggle to handle directing and choreographing a show, as long as his time management is good, although he finds that as a director, he’s also in charge of everything, including the choice of preshow music.
And he’s particularly glad to be working again at the Rep. “I love this house,” he says. “There’s not a bad seat in the theater. Of course, that means the audience can see everything, so the choreography has got to be clean.”
MUSICAL HOMECOMING
This show is also a homecoming for musical director Michael Rice; the Rep premiered his musical adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan in 1985 and Pageant! (now titled American Beauty) in 1989. Baker directed both shows. His Rep credits also include productions of Marry Me a Little and Avenue Q.
Rice has also maintained his Arkansas connection through the Argenta Community Theater, which in 2017 premiered his music drama During Wind and Rain: A Delta Family Album, an homage to his Desha County roots with a libretto by Arkansas author Margaret Jones Bolsterli.
“Musically,” he says, “this is pretty straightforward — it’s Kander & Ebb, it’s vaudeville, and it’s jazz. Vocally, you just throw it out there.” He has never worked on this show before, but “I’ve been a part of so many New York cabaret acts, I knew most of the score. It’s been around so long.”
Milbrath says the biggest challenge in playing Roxie is “pacing and breathing. Roxie also does a lot of talking,” and finding a way to balance Roxie’s big numbers with the more intimate ones, such as “Nowadays.” And, she says, she’s learning how important it is “to tell the story into the songs and the dances. So much of it is told through dance.”
This also is her first production of Chicago, but not her first Kander & Ebb show — “I spent a lot of time doing Cabaret,” including a national tour.
Hobbs, whose Broadway credits include Disney’s Aladdin, says the biggest challenge in taking on the role of Velma Kelly “is making her likeable … . She can be mean, but you want the audience rooting for her.” It’s hard singing, she adds, “brassy, big and bold, but she’s in a great place in my voice.”
Hobbs says her operatic training gives her a leg up, so to speak, but she needs to warm up before every show and rehearsal because Chicago gives Velma “not a lot of runway — that opening number [“All That Jazz”] is full out, right off the bat. I need to make sure I don’t blow my voice out.”
Johnstone says his challenge involves reaching a different place in his own persona to tackle Flynn: “I’m a very chill, calm person, and he’s a quick, fast talker,” he says. “I’m having a lot of fun with that.”
Moreover, he has to walk a fine line in playing the slightly sleazy Flynn. “How can you fall in love with Billy?” he explains. “And yet, just about every character in the show does. It’s the line between likeable vs. admirable. He’s a wheeler and dealer, full of scams, but I can still enjoy how good he is at it, and I love him for it.”
LOCAL CASTING
The cast includes five in the ensemble who are local or who have moved away but have returned to work at the Rep, and, like Rice, there’s one principal for whom the show is a homecoming: Augusta native Felicia Dinwiddie, who’s playing “Mama” Morton, the tough, sassy matron of the Cook County Jail.
Arkansans and Rep veterans Joi Hester and Allison Wilson are among the “Merry Murderesses” featured in the “Cell Block Tango” — Hester as Liz (“Pop”) and Allison as Hunyak (“Uhuh”). The others are Rachel Perlman, who appeared at the Rep in Mary Poppins in 2015, as Mona (“Lipschitz”), Madeleine Corliss as June (“Squish”) and Sarita Crawford as Annie (“Six”).
Sydney Ippolito, a Little Rock native currently living in New York who appeared in the Rep productions of The Little Mermaid and Spamalot, plays Go-to-Hell Kitty. The ensemble also includes area dancer/singers Brian Earles and Anthony Bryant.
Baker, who died Sept. 6 in New York just a week shy of his 71st birthday, had been trying to get the rights to Chicago for at least a decade, but had been stymied by Broadway revivals and a recently wrapped-up national tour, says Rep board chairman Ruth Shepherd, adding, “Cliff’s fingerprints were all over this season.”
He had stepped back into an artistic-administrative role at the Rep as interim artistic adviser and was part of the troika, with Shepherd and board member Bill Rector, that was the Rep’s public face as the nonprofit theater tried to get back on its fiscal and artistic feet last year after the board declared April 24 that it was suspending operations, canceling the final production of the 2017-18 season and the entire 201819 season because of critical cash-flow problems.
SPECIAL EVENTS
■ Hutchins and members of the cast and creative team will discuss the show at noon Thursday in Sturgis Hall, Clinton School of Public Service, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock. Free; reserve a seat by emailing publicprograms@clintonschool. uasys.edu or by calling (501) 683-5239.
■ A post-opening night champagne reception with the cast and light hors d’oeuvres follows Friday’s performance.
■ Pay Your Age Night, Saturday, sponsored by Little Rock Soiree and Zeteo Coffee. If you’re between 22 and 40, you can claim up to four (per household) of the 50 available tickets, in person or by phone (sorry, no online sales), and pay for them based on the age of the group’s oldest person.
■ There will be a post-show talk back Feb. 27.
■ Feb. 28 is Beer Night with Stone’s Throw Brewing, starting at 6 p.m.
■ The 7 p.m. March 13 show will be interpreted into American Sign Language for the hearing-impaired.