University of Central Oklahoma’s Department of Musical Theatre will present Chicago today, Feb. 12, through Feb. 15, at the UCO Jazz Lab. Chicago is a musical comedy set in the Jazz Age of the 1920s, following rival vaudeville performers Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, two women on trial for murder who use performance, celebrity and media attention, alongside slick defense attorney Billy Flynn, to shape public perception. The show features commentary on how sex, celebrity, violence and performance can warp perceptions of what is right and wrong.
“I think the most interesting way to serve up social commentary is to deceive the audience into thinking they are seeing one thing and then by the end of it they understand that they have seen something else,” said director and choreographer Nathan Peck. “My idea was to stick more to how it was done originally in 1975 and less to how it was stylistically revamped in the ’90s for its current revival on Broadway.”
The current Broadway staging of Chicago is often recognizable for using primarily one costume and little to no transitions between scenes. For UCO’s production, Peck and costume designer Christine Lanning instead leaned into a wider range of costumes tied more closely to individual characters and their perspectives.
“This show has so many costumes, and they are all very different because each costume is a fantasy of each character. So Billy Flynn’s costumes, for example, are almost out of period, but then we have ‘Hot Honey Rag,’ the final dance sequence, which has to be in those very period-accurate outfits,” said Grace Martin, a junior at UCO who plays Velma.
“The atmosphere that we are trying to create is a little bit more immersive and integrated into the audience because that’s just the nature of the space,” said Peck, noting the production uses features of the Jazz Lab, such as the second story, and adds elements like catwalks extending from the stage to further integrate the actors with the audience.
As with all UCO musicals, students get in free with a valid UCO ID. However, according to the UCO Musical Theatre Instagram, tickets for every performance have sold out, so good luck finding a seat!
