CHICAGO IS A TRAILBLAZER TOO

Here's how the long-running revival played a lead role in bringing Broadway to the world

All over the globe, Chicago looks like this. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Hotcha, whoopee and welcome to your guide to the international theater industry, Jaques, where I’ve rouged my knees and rolled my stockings down for this week’s SPOTLIGHT STORY about the global reach of Chicago. New to Jaques? Find out more here, and if you’re looking for the most recent edition of ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS, my regular roundup of worldwide theater headlines, it’s right this way:

ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR FEB. 13, 2024

Last year as I was preparing to launch Jaques, one of the first things I did was ask everyone I knew to pinpoint the shows that have been the leading players in the global expansion of the modern-day musical theater industry. What I expected was a list of behemoths: the large-scale juggernauts, many produced by Cameron Mackintosh—Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables—that are generally recognized as the world’s introduction to Broadway and West End replica productions, playing in major cities all over the world.

But there turned out to be one show on the list that I wasn’t expecting: Chicago. Shepherded around the globe by NAMCO (the Broadway production company led by Fran and Barry Weissler), the long-running revival of Chicago has been a trailblazer in its own way—which is one reason Alecia Parker, the executive producer at NAMCO, is now co-head of the international committee at the Broadway League.

So I gave NAMCO’s Barry Weissler and Parker a call to learn more about how Chicago conquered the world. In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight:

• the 28-year history of Chicago’s ongoing growth,

• the firsts it’s logged along the way,

• what makes the show such a nimble traveler,

• the extensive international infrastructure keeping the creative elements up to snuff, and

• the lessons they learned taking Chicago from Broadway to abroad.

Let’s paint the town.

CHICAGO: THE CITY YOU CAN VISIT ALL OVER THE WORLD

It might seem hard to believe now, but back when the enduring revival of Chicago opened in 1996 the musical was still a widely overlooked gem from the 1975-76 season, when it got lost in the long, long shadow cast by another show that opened that year, A Chorus Line. Twenty-one years after its debut, Kander and Ebb’s razor-sharp, timely satire about fame, media, and merry murderesses found its fans with a stripped-down production that originated as part of the third season of New York City Center’s Encores! series of staged readings. Among those fans were Fran and Barry Weissler, the Broadway producers who picked it up and moved it to Broadway, where it went on to win six trophies at the 1997 Tony Awards.

Not long after that, the Weisslers and their production company NAMCO set about expanding Chicago internationally—at a moment when many global theater markets were still in the early stages of developing relationships with Broadway and the West End.

“They were really driving that show all around the world, and at the time no one had really done that other than Cameron Mackintosh,” says John Frost, the veteran Australian producer who has partnered with NAMCO on three replica productions of Chicago down under.

For a lot of territories, Chicago was an early point of contact with the commercial Broadway industry as we know it today. And the specifics of the show itself made it more accessible to local producers and presenters than, say, the chandelier-dropping spectacle of Phantom.