Barry Weissler Exclusive:
Day 7
By Barry Weissler, Rediscovering Chicago
Wed Jan 23, 2008
I always loved Chicago. It has a razor sharp spirit. I had been looking for a way to present it that was as brave as the story itself. I hadn’t seen it since 1975 and Chicago was one of the many great musicals relegated to the proverbial back shelf where it laid gathering dust. Strange because the work itself was, and is, more pertinent than ever.
All around the world we see that justice is rarely just; that the rich and beautiful can get away with anything. The culture of celebrity has only become more hysterical and more global. We all are familiar with corruption. I knew Chicago would speak to people again and was worth reinvestigating.
The production in 1975 felt cartoon-like. It needed to be stripped down and tightly focused. I saw it at Encores, a retirement home for old musicals. It was done in a deconstructed minimalist way, bare and brave, right in the lap of the audience. I saw it and said to myself, “This is it.” That was ten years ago.
Until tomorrow…
Broadway producers Barry & Fran Weissler are the recipients of five Tony Awards®. Their numerous Broadway credits include acclaimed productions Othello with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer, My One and Only with Tommy Tune, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Kathleen Turner and Charles Durning, Gypsy with Tyne Daly, and the Tony Award-winning productions of Falsettos and Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters and Reba McEntire, among others. They are currently represented on Broadway – and across the globe -- with the international smash hit Chicago, which earned six 1997 Tony Awards® including Best Musical Revival, as well as countless other awards in the U.S. and abroad.