Bend the truth, manipulate the media, flash some thigh and you've got it made -- for 15 minutes at least. "Chicago, the Musical" stormed into town Tuesday, promising sex, murder, lies and more sex. And the show delivered the goods, with attitude and flash.
The John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, which played to a packed Atwood Concert Hall audience on Tuesday night, is a hustle from start to finish. Vice and violence top the news in Chicago's boozy 1920s when the show takes place. Everyone's on the make; people lie, cheat, steal and kill with greasy smiles and sweaty handshakes.
And here comes poor Roxie Hart, dreaming of a life of glamour in show biz. She wants to be "America's Next Sweetheart" in vaudeville, by pushing out reigning queen Velma Kelly. Not quite the ingenue she would like the audience to believe, Roxie kills her lover and hires flashy, sleazy Billy Flynn to help her beat a trip to death row.
Bianca Marroquin as Roxie, Brenda Braxton as Velma and Tom Hewitt as Billy head an experienced cast of singers and dancers dressed in black. They all have the "Chicago" look down to the core: edgy, sexy, on the prowl and full of the razzle-dazzle.
Sassy, street-wise Braxton has the strongest voice and dancing of the three leads. Marroquin plays Roxie with the right blend of hopeful naivete and flim-flam while Hewitt's Flynn is the oily showman who works the press and the "justice" system like the marionette he plays Roxie for in "We Both Reached for the Gun."
"Chicago" is cynical to the core and very seductive. Sex rules Ebb and Kander's music and Bob Fosse's dancing. Fosse was the master of a highly erotic, physical jazz dance that shocked audiences in the 1970s when the original musical hit Broadway. Anne Reinking's choreography echoes that sizzle and sex in this pared-down production.
Almost every number is a show-stopper and they all have an arrogance that smiles with bared teeth and spits in your face. A few, though, stand out even in this high-octane musical.
The "Cell Block Tango" drips with anger and sex as six women tell their murderous stories. "He had it coming" they shout as they strut and storm around the stage. Their taut bodies flash like knives as they push the ferocity faster and higher.
Carol Woods' "Mama" Morton, the prison warden, brought Tuesday's house down with her opening number "When You're Good to Mama." Woods puts her "physical endowments" to good use as she sashays her way through some bawdy verbal double-entendres that had the audience roaring at the end.
Hewett dials it down just a bit in "Razzle Dazzle," with a soft shoe that pulls the audience in. Then like the skilled showman he is, Hewett's Flynn slips in the lies and half-truths under a shower of blinding lights, dazzling sequins and nearly bare dancing bodies.
A jazz nightclub orchestra backs up the singing and dancing with verve. In fact, the dancers couldn't have done what they did to the audience -- amaze us, seduce us and play each of us for a willing patsy -- without the skilled musicians under the baton of Andrew Bryan.
Sexy, sassy and sinful, "Chicago" still hits the Broadway musical trifecta. It is "All That Jazz" and more -- and, man did we love it!
Anne Herman holds a master's degree in dance and has been a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts.
By ANNE HERMAN
Daily News correspondent