Word: broadway
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Various writers tried unsuccessfully to adapt Chicago for the screen, and Hytner eventually dropped out. Madonna also moved on, and Chicago languished until 2000, when Rob Marshall--a former Broadway choreographer who had directed Annie on television--came up with a new concept. The show would be reshaped so that all the musical numbers would take place as elaborate vaudeville routines in the dreamy imagination of Roxie. "The hardest part about musicals is that scary moment when characters start to sing," says Marshall, who recruited screenwriter Bill Condon (Oscar winner for 1998's Gods and Monsters) to write the script...
...should come as no surprise that Chicago--a seemingly indestructible show-biz property--has become a vibrant film. The tale--based on the crimes of a couple of real-life celebrity murderesses in the 1920s--was first fictionalized in a 1926 Broadway play, which became a silent movie in 1927, then a film starring Ginger Rogers in 1942. The current Broadway revival of the musical recently celebrated its 2,500th performance. This new big-screen version of Chicago restores the old routine of hit Broadway musicals becoming Hollywood movies. In recent years Broadway has taken from Hollywood without giving back...
...blue eyes. Not even from the close-up seats they give to theater critics, much less a vantage point farther back in the house, where most folks have to sit. In fact, fans of Paul Newman the movie star may find little they recognize in his first appearance on Broadway in 38 years (and even longer, if you forget about 1964's Baby Want a Kiss, which most people have...
...brings to Our Town: modesty. He lets other actors take the limelight, especially Frank Converse and Jeffrey DeMunn, as the fathers of the young lovers; Stephen Spinella, who writes his own play in a couple of vivid scenes as the drunken choirmaster; and Maggie Lacey, who makes a fetching Broadway debut as Emily. Aside from adding some understated sound effects--a newspaper plopping on the porch, the bell when a soda fountain's front door opens and shuts--director James Naughton leaves the play alone. And left alone, it is as moving as ever...
...theater: silence. No coughs, no fidgeting in seats. It's a sure sign that the play has done its chief job: it has got the audience's attention. By this point, we have all but forgotten that Our Town is the vehicle for a big star's comeback on Broadway. And that may be Paul Newman's finest moment. --By Richard Zoglin