`Chicago' Scores On The Rebound -- New Version Of Cynical 1975 Musical Draws Cheers From '90S Crowds

------------------------------- Theater preview

"Chicago," Opens Tuesday and runs Tuesdays-Sundays through July 5, Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St., Seattle; 206-292-ARTS. -------------------------------

First, listen to that opening number.

The beginning notes, played almost nonchalantly.

A mischievous, sinuous voice: "Come on babe, why don't we paint the town, and all that jazz? . . . It's just a noisy hall where there's a nightly brawl, and All. That. Jazzzzz."

The "jazzzz" hisses. Sizzles, slinks and slides around the ears. It is a sound embodying a whole show, known for its sizzle and slink, mischievousness and cynicism. The show, of course, is "Chicago," the multiple-Tony Award winning revival of the 1975 musical dropping into the Paramount Theatre starting Tuesday.

John Kander created that sound. Kander, who wrote "Chicago's" music (the lyrics were penned by Kander's frequent partner, Fred Ebb, and the book was written by Ebb and choreographer/director Bob Fosse), recalls being approached by the legendary Fosse and his wife, dancer/actress Gwen Verdon. Verdon had seen "Roxie Hart," a 1942 movie (starring Ginger Rogers), adapted from the 1926 Maureen Dallas Watkins play about a couple of real-life female murderers.

"It was Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse!" the 71-year-old Kander says by phone from his home in New York City. "They could've asked us to do a musical on the Book of Job and I would've said yes!"

What they asked for wasn't necessarily that much easier: a musical comedy about two merry killers, incorporating a "musical vaudeville" style. The story, about Roxie Hart, a married chorus girl who kills her lover and becomes a celebrity, is told through a series of numbers recalling the styles of vaudeville performers such as Bert Williams, Sophie Tucker and Eddie Cantor.

"I think we felt intuitively that telling the story in that way gave it style," Kander says. "That allowed us to make every song in it a presentation."

"Chicago" opened in 1975, starring Verdon as Roxie Hart; Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly, Hart's rival in notoriety; and Jerry Orbach as slick defense lawyer Billy Flynn.

The cynically humorous show, which commented on everything from media sensationalism to sleazy lawyers, ran for two years and went on to garner 11 Tony Award nominations. But it won not one. The majority of the awards went to another musical that opened the same year, overshadowing "Chicago": "A Chorus Line."

Flash forward some 20 years, and what a difference! In 1996, New York's City Center's Encores! Series, which presents scaled-down concert versions of musicals long absent from Broadway, mounted "Chicago."

"They do a good job," Kander says of Encores!. "But we were not even slightly prepared for what they did. I will never forget that night as long as I live. It was like a rock concert. People were cheering the announcement of the characters!"

That astounding reception to "Chicago" led to the revival of the show on Broadway - where it eventually won six 1997 Tony Awards and became a smash hit, still running at the Shubert Theatre.

In addition to the Broadway show, there is now a "Chicago" company in London and two touring the United States. Next month, the show will open a tour in Australia. And future tours are planned for Vienna, Stockholm and Japan. ("Oh my! Is it that many?!" Kander exclaims when informed of the planned tours.)

What accounts for the difference between the 1975 and 1996 receptions? Has the revival perhaps toned down the show's tart bite? Or is it that people now are more attuned to its cynical tone since they've seen the trials of O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers played out on TV?

"I don't think that's true," Kander says. "When the play was written in the 1920s, it was a cynical time. In 1975, when we wrote the musical, we were coming off Watergate. I don't know what made the show be greeted with greater critical acclaim than before. . . .

"I think maybe it has to do with the theater world, more than anything else. We're living now in a world of huge musicals, with airplanes and huge choruses and souped-up electronic orchestrations - very pretentious. I think that `Chicago' suddenly seemed brand-new because it is so simple and stark, and it's all about the material, rather than the special effects. I think that had a real effect. It's my only theory for why it's working better. It's the same material, orchestration, dialogue, the same choreographic style. I'm tickled to death."

Kander is also tickled by the smash success of "Cabaret," another current Broadway revival of a Kander-and-Ebb musical.

" `Cabaret' is a complete rethinking of the piece by talented directors - Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall," Kander says. "They reinvented it and I think that's been very interesting for people, and certainly been interesting for us. That isn't exactly what happened with `Chicago.' But in both cases, young artists came along (in "Chicago's" case, that would include the show's director, Walter Bobbie, who was also the artistic director of Encores!) and did it their way. Annie (Ann Reinking, who choreographed the show in the style of the late Fosse) put on Bob Fosse's clothes to work. And we've been luckier than hell the past three years."

Perhaps the luck will hold out for even longer. Kander and Ebb are working on two new musicals. "The Skin of Our Teeth," an adaptation of the Thornton Wilder play, started workshops last week in New York. They're also in preliminary talks with Terrence McNally about working on "The Visit," based on a play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Durrenmatt.

But Kander is philosophical about success. "We just write. Mostly we write and rehearse. That's the part of the business that I love. The rest of it is fine - it's terrific if it's succesful; it's sad if it's not. I try not to let that influence the work."

Still, seeing one's works become smash Broadway hits never hurts. "We're just thrilled with what has happened," Kander says. "We are living proof that you never know what's going to happen when you get up in the morning."