By newsfirstusa 
NEW YORK — There’s just one Roxie Hart. And but — stick with us right here — there are many Roxie Harts.
The murderous, washed-up refrain woman is the thrashing, biting middle of Broadway’s mainstay musical “Chicago,” however deny unmarried actor owns her. She in lieu belongs to a revolving sisterhood of performers who, at a look, have negligible in regular — however all have donned a bowler hat and slinked around the level.
There are the musical theater execs some distance from family names. Others, just like Roxie herself, have notoriety however negligible level enjoy. Some are ingenues at the cusp of status. Some are world-weary, taking a look to reclaim the highlight.
Since 1996, the checklist of Roxies has incorporated Brooke Shields, Sandy Duncan, Marilu Henner, Christie Brinkley, Mel B, Gretchen Mol, Brandy, Robin Givens, Lisa Rinna, Ashlee Simpson, Jennifer Nettles, “Trading Spaces” host Paige Davis, “Pose” star Angelica Ross and Ariana Madix of “Vanderpump Rules.”
“‘Chicago’ is different,” says Barry Weissler, a manage manufacturer together with his spouse, Fran. “It welcomes people constantly. There’s never a locked door where we’re concerned.”
Roxie isn’t a lovely function: She kills her lover and tries to get her dimwitted husband to tug the blame. She grows insatiably hungry for status in the back of bars and, nearest an acquittal, groups up with rival Velma to money in with a revue. “The name on everybody’s lips / Is gonna be Roxie,” she purrs.
The revival has lasted for many years, attributable partially to ceaselessly casting celebrities to manage a display concerning the venality of famous person.
“The casting of this show falls in line with the show itself,” says choreographer Greg Butler, who is helping get ready actors in Los Angeles. “We talk about celebrity and how celebrity is glorified. And yet, in a way, we glorify it.”
Glorified although they could also be, the celebs nonetheless have to accomplish. So how does “Chicago” flip a truth megastar into Roxie?
Every Roxie must memorize their strains, sing and build it unwell a ladder in prime heels. However there’s elasticity constructed into the function.
The undisclosed about Roxie: She has two actually fat songs — “Funny Honey” and “Roxie” — however the function isn’t as bodily taxing as Velma’s. And Roxie will all the time be sorted.
“I always say when we bring these celebrities in, we must protect them so that everyone around them and every other part is a full-blooded Broadway pro,” director Walter Bobbie unearths.
In “Roxie,” the merry murderess is surrounded via smitten, admirable male dancers.
“Roxie could simply stand there and have seven men adore her and the number is delivered,” Bobbie says.
Some Roxies want plenty of paintings, together with making a song courses. Some Roxies you drop rejected. Pluck Pamela Anderson, who was a hit in 2022.
“Let her do whatever she wants,” Weissler says. “So she can’t do a somersault, she can’t do a split. It’s all right because she IS Roxie.”
The workforce tries to include the megastar’s signatures. Beneath Anderson’s get dressed, for example, the gown store added material that gave the look of a washing go well with base, a nod to “Baywatch.”
“No one in the show tries to imitate anybody else’s performance. I always try to say, ‘I don’t want you to play Roxie. I want you to find the Roxie in yourself,’” Bobbie says.
All of it starts, although, with touchdown a keen famous person.
“When I approach an agent for a star — no matter how big or small — I always say, ‘Ask not what you can do for “Chicago” however what “Chicago” can do for you,’” says Duncan Stewart, who has landed castmembers for just about twenty years.
Stewart, ARC vice chairman and casting director, emphasizes the section’s glamour and razzle-dazzle in negotiations, in addition to its relative pleasure. All you wish to have is a few coaching and the willingness to put on a dull cocktail get dressed.
“You don’t have to dress up as a spoon or a fork. You don’t have to dress up in green paint and sing through the stratosphere,” he says. “You can rehearse for four weeks and you can do a quick six-week run. You can get your Broadway debut and legacy in under eight weeks.”
Every now and then a star will mull a tone for years. Every now and then they want simply days.
“It’s all about the timing. It’s all about persistence and never accepting a no,” Stewart says. (If a goal Roxie ages out of the function, he says, the deal shifts to Matron “Mama” Morton.)
Celebrities join other causes: Broadway is on their bucket checklist. Their actual excursion bought poorly. They have been not too long ago divorced. They’re doing it for his or her youngsters.
“They need some way of saying to the world, ‘I’m worthy. I can prove my mettle,’” says Stewart.
A couple of times a time he is going to a newsstand and buys $400 importance of magazines — Ebony, Family, Selection, you title it. He palms them to his personnel, in conjunction with dull pens.
His directions: “There are no bad ideas. Circle everybody from these magazines and just write in black pen, ‘Roxie,’ ‘Velma,’ ‘Billy,’ ‘Amos,’ ‘Mama.’”
The names journey right into a spreadsheet, which matches to the selling workforce and manufacturers, who rating the names from one to 5. One is unpleasant. 3, 4 and 5 recommended him to pursue passion and availability.
Stewart after places in combination a file with background main points at the doable Roxie — possibly she performed saxophone in highschool or sang with a band. He delivers the document and any YouTube pictures to the Weisslers.
With their inexperienced brightness, the deal is going out — contingent on a a hit boot camp.
Like the army, Roxie’s boot camp is supposed to develop volunteers up — with a quantity much less screaming.
“We try to meet them where they are,” says Butler, an assistant choreographer since 2005 who carried out within the display for 14 years and was once a dance captain.
“They have something that you can’t really teach them. They understand the idea of celebrity,” he says. “They are pulling from life.”
Butler most often asks the Roxie-to-be to attract on what they know: purple carpets, information meetings, getting their photos taken via paparazzi. They journey from there.
“Ultimately, your feet are probably going to have to leave the ground and you’re probably going to have to kick. So I’m going to have to teach you how to punch your foot,” he tells his starry scholars.
He began one consultation with Rita Wilson via asking her if she had a favourite pose. “And she was like, ‘Oh my God! I have this pose,’” Butler says. “We used it and then she starts to build from that.”
The fresh “Chicago” debuted on Broadway in 1975, directed via Bob Fosse. Butler credit Ann Reinking — the long-lasting Fosse collaborator who originated Roxie within the 1996 revival and created the choreography in Fosse’s taste — with cracking how one can accommodate the skillset of each and every successive Roxie. Vocal coaches additionally assistance in finding the fitting keys and strategy to each and every music.
Probably the most more difficult issues Roxie faces comes all over the music “Hot Honey Rag.” In a layout nicknamed The Cakewalk, the actor should dance backward generation executing a form of intricate hand actions. Educated dancers, like Reinking, depend on their robust cores. However Melanie Griffith, basically a movie actor, struggled with The Cakewalk. The 2 experimented with other concepts as Griffith ready to transform Roxie in 2003.
“She just started doing a move and Annie saw her do this thing and she went, ‘Oh my, God! OK. Do that again,’” he recollects.
What Griffith had finished was once fan her palms over her head and build her hips and palms exit on the similar while.
“Annie, said ‘That’s it. That’s your move,’” he recounts. “So now there’s a step in the show that we call The Melanie, just in case I have an actress where The Cakewalk does not look awesome on them.”
Some parts could also be tweaked however build deny mistake: It’s parched paintings.
“There’s new parts of my body that are sore that I didn’t know would actually get sore,” says Alyssa Milano, probably the most latest Roxies, in the course of her boot camp. “And I’ve been a dancer all my life.”
The Roxies who don’t have in depth level or dance backgrounds would possibly really feel susceptible.
“I tell them that falls right in line with Roxie Hart,” Butler says. “I’m like, ‘Honey, you are halfway there.’”
Melora Hardin was once greater than midway there. “The Office” megastar arrived now not handiest ready to sing, but additionally as a lifelong dancer, first in ballet and after in jazz.
Hardin was once taught a couple of numbers in a Valley studio sooner than aviation to Fresh York to accomplish in entrance of Weissler and his workforce.
She may inform they appreciated it.
“Barry walks me to the window and kind of puts his arm around my shoulder and asks, ‘Where have you been? Why haven’t I met you before?’” she recollects.
She were given the task at the spot.
Speedy-forward and Hardin in overdue 2008 made her Broadway debut, along with her husband and two younger daughters within the target audience. When fanatics threw her roses, she’d effort to toss them to her women. She laughs that the family appeared extra inspired via her somersault than nailing her Fosse steps.
“It’s definitely something that I will hold as one of the most joyful times of my life,” says Hardin. “I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful experience.”
Roxie has been kicking for greater than 11,000 performances on Broadway, regardless of recession, storms, an epidemic and an Oscar-winning adaptation. “Chicago” is the second one longest-running display in Broadway historical past, in the back of handiest the now-closed “The Phantom of the Opera.” In all, the musical has been detectable via greater than 32 million family throughout 36 international locations and greater than 500 towns.
“The show changes from actor to actor, from country to country, from city to city, from company to company,” says Butler.
However Butler has his favorites. He nonetheless will get excited on every occasion certainly one of his Roxies slays: “It’s like giving birth. I’m just like, ‘Oh, my God, my little baby’s about to step up!’”
Traits come and journey, however “Chicago” endures, fed via a plot gorged with famous person tradition, greed and media manipulation. “It keeps becoming more relevant, not less. More,” says Weissler.
Bobbie bristles at critics who deride the revolving door as a gimmick: “You can call it stunt casting all you want. There’s an authenticity to it.”
He argues that “Chicago” will all the time be other than maximum alternative Broadway displays.
“The guy doesn’t get the girl. The girl gets the girl,” he says with fun. “This is about a romance with show business.”
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This tale has been corrected to take away Jinkx Monsoon from the checklist of Roxies; the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner performed Matron “Mama” Morton.
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Illustrations via Annie Ng.
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits