When we first arrived, Jerry Springer was in the role as Billy Flynn. Mid-July, he left the cast and Michelle Williams from Destiny's Child joined on as Roxie Hart.
(By the way, getting the Michelle Williams picture was quite the battle. The theater usher put the show at 8:00 sign right in front of her name, which of course you want IN your picture. Well right before I'm trying to get this shot, two girls move the sign in front of the poster right beside Michelle's. The little usher swoops down from seemingly nowhere, mutters angry words, and drags the sign back to its original position. He disappears - or so you think. So Billy casually scoots the sign over just a few inches so I can snap the photo - and literally this usher pops out and very angrily returns the sign in front of the poster again. I feel like he fought this battle all night and it likely would have served his purposes to place the sign in front of a less popular - though not necessarily less talented, of course - actress's poster.)
Anyway, one of the girls on the trip celebrated her birthday, and it was her birthday wish to see Chicago. It was my desire to see shows while I was in London, and I was a little interested in seeing the show. The story line is sassy, the songs are catchy, the movie was great, so we checked out tickets.
Actually, our professor who was taking us on our afternoon excursion through London conveniently passed us by the theater while we were examining the Seven Dials slums of Mayhew's work (which is now a fairly trendy area). He stopped us and said, "I will now proceed to give a boring historical lecture, but anyone interested in seeing the show can check out student rush tickets."
So - I love student rush tickets, by the way. £20 or so for £60+ seats. Can I forever have a student id card? We got a great view from our seats in the stalls - only a few rows from the stage. The show was entertaining, but I didn't walk away stunned. I think this is one of the few musicals made into movies where the movie might actually not only put up a good fight but win. It's hard to beat the all-star movie cast (Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifa, Taye Diggs) and really creative dramatic aspects of the movie that just couldn't be duplicated on a stage. That doesn't mean that the live show wasn't great - I actually quite appreicated the second act which deviates from the movie storyline and song numbers a bit. And for the rest of the evening and the entire walk/tube ride home the group of us sang and danced out numbers. I could appreciate the live musical separate from the movie.
Slight side note - before we went to the show, we stopped in a cupcake store for a delicious treat. I actually was quite surprised because it was actually a muffin topped with icing (sometimes I think they get things a little confused... I had a milkshake here that literally was made with milk. No ice cream. It wasn't quite as satisfying as I could have hoped, as much as I love milk).
The muffin topped with icing was nevertheless delicious though. However, the real perplexing part was this little bunny gummy on top. I didn't think anything of it at first - Easter bunny and egg in July is a little bit strange. I've only ever heard of Christmas in July? I come to find out - the British don't dye Easter eggs. They just don't. Some actually have never heard of such a thing and some are quite confused by how we do it (our resident advisor from Greenwich thought we injected the eggs with color before we hard boiled them so the color would seep out onto the shell). So why... especially in July... is there an Easter bunny holding a colored Easter egg on my icing topped muffin? Something to think about!
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