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Stage

Sweet home 'Chicago'

For Brenda Braxton, moving from the Broadway revival of the musical to the road version was a comfortable fit.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published July 29, 2004

Brenda Braxton didn't plan on touring again. She was doing just fine staying home in Harlem, starring in the monstrously successful Broadway revival of Chicago.

But if anything would draw her back into the provinces, it was this new/old road version of Chicago, with essentially the cast she had toured with last year.

"Everything just went so well with the last tour," she said. "Gregory Harrison is just wonderful, and I think we have a really good core of performers coming back from the last tour."

The tour, with familiar TV star Harrison as Billy Flynn and Braxton as Velma Kelly, is making its first stop in Tampa, where it will spend a week at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

People who know Chicago only from the 2002 movie version will probably be in for a few surprises, Braxton said.

"Well, I think perhaps one big difference is that I'm an African-American woman, so it can't help but be different just because of that," she said. "Also, my Velma has a little more humor than most."

If it sounds like she's being a little vague, she probably is. Braxton avoided the hit movie because she didn't want it to influence her performance.

But she knows the Broadway version and the road show as well as anyone, and she can assure Tampa Bay area audiences that they'll be getting the real deal. Unlike so many touring productions, this one hasn't been trimmed to make travel more efficient.

"It's not scaled down at all," she said. "It's still the 100-percent Broadway production."

One reason it didn't have to be scaled down, she said, is that the Broadway show, which has been running for almost eight years, was pared down from the original 1975 version. But the paring was a matter of artistic choice, not logistical compromise.

"The orchestra's onstage, and the actors are sitting in chairs," Braxton said. "And because there's really no set, it's not about a period, it's just about these characters. It could be in the '20s, it could be in the '40s, it could be in the '90s."

The story, based on a nonmusical 1942 Ginger Rogers movie, which was based on a play, takes place mostly in the Cook County Jail, where two vaudevillians forge a tense relationship. Roxie Hart, who has murdered her husband, becomes more famous for being a killer than she ever was for being an entertainer.

One of her jail mates is Velma, who murdered her sister and also enjoyed some media attention. Velma resents Roxie for stealing her publicity (and the lawyer Flynn's attention), but the two become friends and partners.

To a certain extent, Braxton said, it almost doesn't matter what the sets are like, or even which Broadway actors are on tour. Braxton said that as long as audiences get to see Ann Reinking's sinewy choreography (patterned after Bob Fosse's work from 1975), and as long as they get to hear the rousing songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, they can't help but love this show.

"The cast is great," she said, "but Chicago pretty much stands on its own."

PREVIEW: Chicago, Sunday through Aug. 7, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 North W.C. MacInnes Place, Tampa; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 2 and 8 p.m. Sat. No show Monday. $20-$66.50, plus service charge. Call (813) 229-7827.

[Last modified July 28, 2004, 10:17:13]