Fosse’s Wicked Fun

If one song could sum up Bob Fosse’s art and his worldview, it would be “Razzle Dazzle.” In the terrific touring production of “Chicago” that opened Wednesday night at the Ahmanson Theatre, “Razzle Dazzle” is sung by Billy Flynn (a winning Brent Barrett), the world’s sleaziest criminal lawyer. With an adorable upturned nose and the scruples of an assassin, he is a cross between Dick Powell and Ted Bundy. His trial strategy, crooned while soft-shoeing in an expensive suit: “Give ‘em the old hocus-pocus / Bead and feather ‘em. / How can they see with sequins in their eyes? / . . . Razzle dazzle ‘em/And they’ll never catch wise.”

First produced in 1975, “Chicago” is one of the best arguments ever made for style over substance. Set in the jazz age of the late ‘20s, the loose story, told in a series of vaudeville skits, is peopled with murderers, liars and other rabid publicity-seekers. Pleasure, for the show’s cold-blooded characters, may be only shallow and fleeting--but in “Chicago,” pleasure for the audience is deep and real. “Chicago” is Fosse’s valentine to dancers, to people who know how to electrify and relish every move in their arsenal. Sweeping the story clean of morality, of sentiment, of everything but wicked fun, “Chicago” creates a tension between performer and material that is almost Beckett-like in its directness.

First staged as a concert reading, this 1996 revival, which is still selling out on Broadway, features a relatively bare stage with a wonderful onstage orchestra (led here by Jack Gaughan) encased in a frame (the classic orchestrations are by Ralph Burns). Some chairs and racks of lights constitute the set. Due to the vicissitudes of casting, this “Chicago” is less about Velma Kelly, the good-looking killer whose media star is eclipsed by the more publicity-savvy Roxie Hart. Here, thanks to an intoxicating performance by Charlotte d’Amboise, a sensational dancer and no-holds-barred comedian, Roxie is what it’s all about.

Playing Velma, the role that Bebe Neuwirth made into a precision instrument, Jasmine Guy lacks the wattage that made Neuwirth a star in New York. Guy performs her numbers well but she doesn’t own them. Her movements are more stiff than taut, her expression more hard than cool. She cops Velma’s bad attitude well, in her sexy black slip and in the long journey her eyelids take when they’re being lowered to the floor. But she doesn’t make every movement count the way D’Amboise does, who executes a Fosse turn as if she were born to do it--flexed ankles propelling the body around, pelvis circling in the opposite direction, hand on hat, everything else still, flawless, crisp.

While steeped in the ghost of Fosse, this “Chicago” was actually put together by director Walter Bobbie, who has perfect pitch for the show’s icy, black humor, and by choreographer Ann Reinking, a former Fosse protegee, who uses his work as a guide but not as a bible. Each one of the show’s 22 numbers is a polished gem from songwriter John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb. The book is by Fosse and Ebb.

Great numbers include “Cell Block Tango,” a burlesque of self-righteous female rage, in which a half-dozen scantily clad murderesses all claim defiantly, “He had it coming,” while gorgeously straddling chairs. In “All I Care About,” another Billy Flynn paean to himself, Barrett is sublimely self-satisfied when surrounded by showgirls who cover him in Busby Berkeley-like white feather fans. A bone-dry duet in which two women sit almost perfectly still and bemoan, in the foulest language, the passing of classiness is expertly fielded by Guy and by Avery Sommers as the prison matron. In “Mister Cellophane,” Ron Orbach, sole representative of the pathologically self-effacing, is funny as the man no one sees.

In clean, anti-sentimental style, “Chicago” only makes one reference to the horrific shallowness of all of its darling characters. The number “Nowadays” finds D’Amboise and Guy performing an ostensible ode to freedom, one in which “there’s men everywhere/jazz everywhere/booze everywhere/life everywhere” and also, they unconvincingly claim, “joy everywhere.” For Roxie and Velma, joy may be a hollow concept. For the audience at “Chicago,” it’s an entirely different matter.

* “Chicago--The Musical,” Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays (through June 14), 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m.; also June 18 and 25, July 2, 2 p.m. Ends July 5. $25-$70. (213) 628-2772. Also at Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, (714) 740-7878, (213) 365-3500. July 7-11, 8 p.m.; July 12, 7:30 p.m.; July 11-12, 2 p.m. $21-$52.50. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Jasmine Guy: Velma Kelly

Charlotte d’Amboise: Roxie Hart

Jeffrey Broadhurst: Fred Casely

Gerry McIntyre: Sergeant Fogarty, The Judge

Ron Orbach: Amos Hart

Wendy Edmead: Liz

Linda Bowen: Annie

Marianne McCord: June

Cheryl Clark: Hunyak

Dana Moore: Mona

Avery Sommers: Matron ‘Mama’ Morton

Brent Barrett: Billy Flynn

M.E. Spencer: Mary Sunshine

Sandahl Bergman:Go-to-Hell-Kitty

Chris Holly: Harry

Gregory Reuter: Aaron

Darren Lee: Doctor, Martin Harrison

Gerry McIntyre: The Judge

Michael Gorman: The Bailiff, Court Clerk

Michael Arnold: The Jury

With: R. Bean, Angel Creeks, Michelle Potterf, T. Oliver Reid, Mitch Rosengarten

A production of Barry and Fran Weissler in association with Kardana/Hart Sharp Entertainment. Book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Original production directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. Directed by Walter Bobbie. Choreography in the style of Bob Fosse by Ann Reinking. Supervising musical director Rob Fisher. Music director Jack Gaughan. Sets John Lee Beatty. Costumes William Ivey Long. Lights Ken Billington. Sound Scott Lehrer. Original orchestrations Ralph Burns. Dance music arrangements Peter Howard. Production supervisor Clifford Schwartz. Production stage manager Lois L. Griffing.