When Liza Stepped Into Chicago — Page 3

Bump.

Because sometimes you just have to remember that once upon a time, Liza stepped into Chicago to help out some friends.

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After seeing Kander and Ebb's Chicago in 1975, Ethel Merman complained to her friend Rose Marie, "You know what Gwen Verdon says right at the beginning? 'I gotta pee!' Can you imagine that in a musical? Jeez, that ain't Broadway." However, when Merman attended a performance of the Tony-winning Torch Song Trilogy, playwright/star Harvey Fierstein asked what she thought of the show, and has quoted her as responding with, "I thought it was a piece of s***, but the audience laughed and cried, so what the ***k do I know?"

Merman and AfterEight and MiniAfterEight would have been such good friends.

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Bumping a thread like this is always in order.

The week I saw CHICAGO must have been in the summer or early fall of '75, my first time coming into NYC from college in Massachusetts, expressly to catch some Broadway shows on my own. Monday night was my first view of the long-playing PIPPIN, Saturday matinee was a hard-won orchestra seat to the sold out A CHORUS LINE, and Wednesday night was CHICAGO. I could swear it was Lenora Nemetz and Chita playing Roxie and Velma, but the Playbill is long gone that would have proved it. I remember being in the back of the mezzanine, and moving down to sit on the stairs for most of the show to have a clearer shot of the forestage than my seat had afforded.

Let me tell you, that show was pitch dark, in tone as well as illumination level (apologies to Jules Fisher's lighting). The clothes, the poses, the come-ons from the cast-- were skanky and hypnotic and as nasty as the scenes Fosse would later create for his burlesque strippers in ALL THAT JAZZ. The set was all black plexi and hidden uplights that would pop on from in the deck. Cramped floor space mostly occupied by the bandstand and curved stairs that would track in later. The tension was pulled taut from the first vamp to the last popping flashbulb of the finale. Unforgiving, unpretty, uninterested in flattering the audience one bit (as opposed to the easy-to-love Pippin production around the corner). You were gonna be schooled here, and you might not necessarily enjoy it a whole lot of the time. In a way, I imagine it tried to go where FOLLIES had gone 4 years earlier, and the THREEPENNY OPERA revival at Lincoln Center would successfully achieve a year later, that "quote-unquote Brechtian" musical that wrestles with bitter truths in the guise of popular entertainments.

I was thrilled to see the show even if I didn't love it as a 19-year-old. (What do 19-year-olds know anyway?)

The rehearsal-clothes concert-staged revival that has usurped the meaning of the show CHICAGO for so many younger theatergoers on this board turned a hypnotic and difficult piece of total theater into a glitzy Vegas-y artifact. They don't know what they're missing.

Updated On: 1/25/15 at 04:51 PM

Wow. It was so great to somehow stumble on this thread tonight. I never saw Liza in CHICAGO; first saw her on Broadway in THE ACT, a sub-par show with a few good numbers and Liza giving it her all...and then some. I only wish I could've seen her in CHICAGO...when it wasn't a Vegas-like tourist attraction. Oh, hell...I loved the revival, too!

Interesting, watching those videos....Ann Hathaway could easily do Liza in a biopic but they would have to film it sooner rather than later. She would have made a great Liza when she was younger.

God, this brings back memories. I saw Chicago when it first opened, and liked - didn't love -- it. I remember thinking that the first act was too long. When I read that Liza was going to be in it, I got tickets immediately, which meant that I saw the show twice in a very short period, which was a lot for me at the time (ticket prices had to be paid twice and there were other shows to see).

I loved it the second time -- I suspect that I had probably managed to get the album, and was more familiar with the score the second time. Liza was terrific, although clearly not the dancer that Verdon was. I remember thInking that Liza was very game, and sorta came across as one of those heroines her mother played who was going to 'put on a show' with Mickey Rooney. 1000 Watt desire to please. . By the time, the original production closed, I had seen with Verdon, Minelli, and Reinking. IMO, all three were excellent, but Verdon was just special. I also remember thinking that Reinking sounded exactly like Verdon when she sang. I don't remember seeing her in anyt other subsequent (she had left the revival before I saw it for the first time), so I don't know whether she was imitating Verdon or just happened have the same voice.

Of course, I have never seen anyone who I thought was as good as Bebe Neuwirth was as Velma.

This was an incredible thread to read. Thank you to everyone for sharing what is was like to be in that audience!

Does anyone know what happened to Pal Joey? It looks like his last post was in December 2018

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