Apparently somebody’s making a movie version of the great musical Chicago. Called Chicago: the Musical, it’s scheduled for release at Christmas (in the U.S.).
As often happens with movie versions of Broadway shows, they’ve cast movie actors in the leads. Renee Zellweger is cast as Roxie Hart, Zeta-Jones is Velma Kelly, and Richard Gere is Billy Flynn.
Now, these aren’t parts where you can talk your way through a song like Rex Harrison. Chicago has a fantastic score, and these parts call for some serious pipes.
I see Queen Latifah is going to be Matron “Mama” Morton; that’s creative casting, and I’m sure she can belt it out. But about Zellweger, Zeta-Jones and Gere, I don’t have a clue whether they can carry a tune in a bucket.
So, I’m wondering if anybody knows if these three actors can sing? (Frankly, I don’t even know if Catherine Zeta-Jones can act.)
Surprisingly, Zeta-Jones can sing. I saw her on one of those VH-1 “Before They Were Stars” things, and they showed her on some UK talk show when she was trying to get a singing career going. She seemed to have a passable set of pipes for pop music, if an unremarkable one. I’m not familiar with the music from Chicago, so I don’t know if it tends towards the classic Broadway style or the more modern Rent-type style. If the latter, she’ll be all right, but not spectacular.
I’ll bet Zellweger can sing, but I don’t care if she can. I could look at her all day long. Even moreso with those extra 15 “Bridget Jones” pounds.
Judge for yourself. The teaser trailer is available here. It shows Catherine Zeta-Jones singing “All That Jazz” with a brief bit from Renee Zellweger. Gere has done some singing on Broadway, and the producers wouldn’t have cast him if he couldn’t pull off the role of Billy Flynn, who sings “They Both Reached for the Gun” and “Razzle-Dazzle.”
Chicago was originally produced on Broadway in 1975, with Chita Rivera and Gwen Verdon as the two leads and Jerry Orbach as the unscrupulous lawyer. The score was written by Kander and Ebb, who also wrote the songs in Cabaret and Kiss of the Spider Woman, among others. The songs are patterned after 1920s jazz, and the show is performed as a musical revue, with the plot progressing in short vignettes between songs.
In 1996, *Chicago * was revived as a concert piece, then as a full-scale Broadway production with Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwirth as Roxie and Velma, and James Naughton as Billy Flynn.
From what I read online, the movie will show the songs as hallucinations in Renee Zellweger’s mind, much like Bob Fosse’s movie All That Jazz.
I wouldn’t be too quick to write off Gere, I was blown away by how well the late Robert Urich–somebody I never dreamed could sing-- sang in the production of Chicago at the National Theater in DC in 1999. He was awesome, as were Nana Visitor and Vicki Lewis as Velma and Roxie–much better than the New York cast, IMHO.
