Tickets are now on sale for “Chicago: High School Edition” presented by Castle View High School. The award-winning Castle View Theatre Company received several Bobby G awards last year, including Best Production for “Mamma Mia.” Click here to buy tickets to Chicago, which runs November 13-16 and 20-22, with a special matinee on Saturday, November 16. Student and senior (60+) discounts are available with valid ID.
Chicago is a musical based on a play of the same name authored by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a reporter who had covered the 1920s trials of real-life Chicago murderers Beaulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, upon whom the lead roles of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly were based. Classic Bob Fosse jazz choreography joins some of Broadway’s most memorable show tunes (such as “All That Jazz,” “Mr. Cellophane,” and “Cell Block Tango”) to relate the story of two rival murderesses who attempt to use their good looks and Vaudeville skills to escape conviction.
Interestingly, famed director and choreographer Bob Fosse reportedly tried to buy the rights to the original play for nearly a decade, but each time, Watkins refused to sell. She had become a born-again Christian later in life and was concerned that her play sensationalized a debaucherous way of life. When Watkins died in 1969, Fosse (along with Richard Fryer and Fosse’s wife, Gwen Verdon) were able to secure the rights and turn the show into one of the longest-running American musicals in Broadway history.
