Review: Chicago The Musical on Broadway NYC is good but not great | Covering the Intersections of Race, Culture, Sexuality, and Fashion | 48min Review: Chicago The Musical on Broadway NYC is good but not great | Covering the Intersections of Race, Culture, Sexuality, and Fashion | 48min

Review: Chicago The Musical on Broadway NYC is good but not great

It’s good. Isn’t it grand? Isn’t it great? Isn’t it swell?…

Well… It was certainly good.

After years of trying to get myself to go see Chicago: The Musical on Broadway, my partner and I finally threw down and got us some tickets. Why now, after all these years? Because Kandi Burruss recently started her 2 month run with the show, and as RHOA fans, we love us some Kandi.

Going in to the show, I had high expectations for it. I’m a huge fan of the movie version that came out back in 2002, and have watched it way more times than I’d like to admit. Movies and live theater are totally different mediums so going in I kept that in mind. I expected some killer choreography since the show centers in on a woman who dreams of being a performer and a woman who has nothing else but performance. I knew it wouldn’t be a full blown musical (the likes of Wicked, or Miss Saigon) with set changes and extravagant theatrics. I knew it would be a riff off the vaudevillian era that Chicago is set in.

20 minutes in, I found myself nervous for the performers. That type of nervousness that parents feel for their kids when they play in a basketball match — hoping for a Stephen Curry moment, but completely okay with DeAndre Jordan.

The choreography had a lot to be desired. The ensemble really had the most exciting role. Their choreography was great! The atmosphere they created for each scene really made the show for me. It was the choreography of the two leads that left me underwhelmed. For Velma Kelly’s “Can’t Do It Alone” piece, a song and dance that is all about selling her two-person bit to the other lead, Roxie Hart, felt very much like a throwaway – kind of like when a friend mocks a scene from a movie that they didn’t really care for. This isn’t to say that the acting was bad. I thought the leads were really interesting and intriguing characters. The energy and choreography for their song numbers didn’t do their parts any favors.

There were, however, some really great redeeming moments. “Cell Block Tango” was great, “Razzle Dazzle”, “We Both Reached for the Gun”, “Mr. Cellophane”, and the Finale, where finally I got to see the skills the two lead performers have that I felt was missing until that point.

Overall, I’m happy I was able to see the show live, though I wasn’t as impressed as I had hoped I’d be.

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"Chicago The Musical" on Broadway
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