Having spent the better part of the past fourteen years wowing worldwide audiences as Chicago’s Velma Kelly, Terra C. MacLeod returns to Moonlight Stage Productions to deliver a sensational star turn as Roxie Hart, the first of many very good reasons not to miss this terrific new take on an old favorite.

 Like the 1996 Broadway revival still going strong at 9000+ performances, Moonlight’s Chicago takes a minimalist approach—orchestra onstage, a stark black scenic design, and ensemble members garbed in sexy black body-hugging dance gear—while retaining glamour and glitz galore.

It’s late 1920s Chicago, and raven-haired vaudeville vixen Velma Kelly (Roxane Carrasco) finds herself joined in the slammer by fellow accused murderess Roxie Hart (MacLeod).

 Though guilty as sin, Roxie convinces her patsy husband Amos (Randall Hickman)  to take the blame for her crime … that is until he figures out that it wasn’t a burglar she shot but her lover.

 Arrested and sent to the same Cook County Jail where Velma and a bevy of unrepentant femme fatales await their day in court, Roxie hires flashy hotshot defense attorney Billy Flynn (David Engel) to get her off scot-free, news that doesn’t sit well with Billy’s other client Velma, who refuses share the spotlight with anyone, let alone a nobody like Roxie.

 Completing the cast of principals are Matron “Be Good To Mama” Morton (Regina LeVert), ever willing to help a nubile inmate in exchange for “favors,” and sob-sister crime reporter Mary Sunshine (Elle H. Jacobs), a woman who believes that every accused murderess has “a bit of good” in her, and takes it upon herself to make sure that Chicagoans’ sympathies remain firmly with Roxie Hart.

 Though Roxie’s story (based on real-life 1924 Chicago hubby-killer Beulah Annan) had been around for decades, it took book writers Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse to come up with Chicago The Musical’s inspired concept—to stage Roxie and Velma’s stories as a vaudeville show featuring precisely the kind of musical numbers that the two vaudevillians themselves would have performed.

Though I can’t help wishing Moonlight’s Chicago (sets by Plan-B Entertainment, costumes by Roz Lehman and Renetta Lloyd, onstage orchestra conducted by Kenneth Gammie) did more to distinguish itself from Broadway’s black-on-black design, Corey Wright’s sizzling new choreography manages quite miraculously to be both Fosse-eque and original, and since this is Chicago, there’s a whole lot of it from start to finish.

 Indeed, there could be no Chicago The Musical without a dance ensemble up to executing Wright’s takes on Fosse’s signature turned-in knees, jutting hips, sideways shuffling, and hand-and-shoulder rolls, and Moonlight’s crackerjack ensemble does that to precision perfection.

 Leggy “Cell Block Tango” girls Danielle Airey (Hyunak), Nicole Athill (Go-To-Hell-Kitty), Kalin Booker (Mona), Deborah Fauerbach (June), Tamara Rodriguez (Liz), and Amy Beth Shmiedel (Annie) and their male counterparts in sex appeal and dance chops—Edgar Cardoso (Court Clerk), Tad Fujioka (Aaron), Danny Hansen (Harry, Martin Henderson), Ty Koeller (Sergeant Fogarty), Jacob Narcy (Juror), Matthew Ryan (The Judge), and Tim Stokel (Fred Casely)—give their Broadway counterparts a run for their money, with special snaps to featured dancers Hansen and Ryan, Airey’s death-defying aerial heartstopper, Stokel’s too-sexy-for-his-shirt Fred, and Narcy’s hilarious sextet of jurors.

Co-director’s James Vásquez and MacLeod, while influenced by the ’96 Broadway revival, paint their own imaginative strokes every step of the way, aided and abetted by a half dozen of the best lead performers in town.

 Having played Velma on Broadway, Carrasco brings the homicidal fireball to edgy, electrifying life; Engel makes for a silver-throated, silver-foxy Billy; LeVert steals scenes left and right as a big-voiced, big-attitude Mama Morton; Hickman’s Amos is such a charmer, it’s hard to imagine anyone not noticing “Mr. Cellophane”; and Jacobs is sweetness and gaiety personified as the aptly named Mary Sunshine.

 Still, for this reviewer at least, Moonlight’s Chicago is all about Terra C. MacLeod’s elevation from Velma to a role that has too often suffered from stunt casting, the Broadway star delivering a performance that ought to win her every San Diego Best Actress award in the book.

Deliciously ditsy, supremely sassy, as spectacular a dancer as she is a vocal champ, and funny as all get-out opposite LeVert in “Class,” MacLeod makes Roxie indubitably, indelibly her own.

Musical director J.D. Dumas conducts Chicago’s Grade-A orchestra and Jennifer Edwards lights the production with abundant pizzazz, with additional design kudos going to Jim Zadai (sound design), Peter Herman (wig design), Gabe Nunez (makeup design), and Bonnie Durben (properties design).

Stanley D. Cohen is production stage manager and Nathan Harper is assistant stage manager. Hansen is assistant to the choreographer.

With Chicago still running both on Broadway and on National Tour, rare is the regional theater that can snag rights to their own production. SoCal audiences can rejoice that Moonlight Stage Productions not only nabbed the coveted rights but delivers a Chicago that equals if not surpasses the record-breaking Broadway revival that inspired it.

Moonlight Amphitheatre, 1200 Vale Terrace Drive, Vista.
www.moonlightstage.com

–Steven Stanley
September 16, 2018
Photos: Ken Jacques Photography

Tags: Kander & Ebb, Moonlight Stage Productions, San Diego County Theater Review