Escape to 'Chicago'

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Sep 14, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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How can they see with raindrops in their eyes?

Wait, better change that to sequins, because the plan is to razzle dazzle audiences out of the hurricane blues.

So, the raindrops will go, but some of the wind has to stay when Chicago opens Friday, Sept. 26, at Baton Rouge Little Theater.

That’s Chicago as in the Fred Ebb and John Kander musical, not the city. But, hey, the musical packs as much wind as its namesake, especially when Billy Flynn explains exactly how to razzle dazzle any audience.

That’s when he poses the questions, “How can they hear the truth above the roar?” and “How can they see with sequins in their eyes?”

Well, Keith Dixon is confident little theater audiences are ready for a few sequins.

“It was really the same situation in 2005, when we staged A Chorus Line just after Hurricane Katrina,” he said. “People in Baton Rouge were ready for an escape after that, and we’re ready to give them another escape after Hurricane Gustav.”

So, this time it’s to 1920s Chicago, where the killers in question aren’t members of Al Capone’s Outfit but the Six Merry Murderesses of the Cook County Jail.

Actually, there’s seven, counting Roxie Hart.

OK, so you’re now wondering just how is the little theater going to cheer up everyone by staging a musical about killers.

“It’s very tongue-in-cheek,” Dixon said.

He’s the little theater’s executive director and producer of this play. Michael Gorman is directing and choreographing this production, which originally was staged by Bob Fosse in Broadway’s 48th Street Theatre.

Opening night was June 3, 1975, with Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly, Gwen Verdon as Roxie Hart and Jerry Orbach as the grandstanding, razzle-dazzling defense attorney Billy Flynn.