musical.today Chicago The Musical
Chicago The Musical: a hundred-year history
Two women shot their lovers in Chicago in the spring of 1924. Both were acquitted, both became famous, and the court reporter who covered them turned the whole circus into a play. A century later, the musical made from that play is the longest-running American musical in Broadway history — and it is still selling tickets in thirty-seven cities.
What follows is the whole chain, dated. The interesting part is not that Chicago succeeded; it is that it failed first, was revived on a shoestring, and won because the shoestring turned out to be the right idea.
A hundred years, in order
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March–April 1924
Two women, two revolvers, one courthouse
Belva Gaertner is arrested on 12 March, Beulah Annan on 3 April. Both are accused of shooting a man; both are acquitted. Maurine Dallas Watkins covers the trials for the Chicago Tribune and watches the city fall for the defendants rather than the dead.
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1926
The reporter writes the play
Watkins turns her own copy into a stage satire. Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly are Annan and Gaertner with the names changed, and the target is not murder but the machinery that makes a murderer famous.
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3 June 1975
Kander, Ebb and Fosse open on Broadway
Music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, book by Ebb and Bob Fosse, who directs and choreographs. Gwen Verdon is Roxie, Chita Rivera is Velma, Jerry Orbach is Billy Flynn, Barney Martin is Amos. It runs 936 performances at the 46th Street Theatre and closes on 27 August 1977.
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August–September 1975
Liza Minnelli takes over for a month
Verdon needs throat surgery. Minnelli plays Roxie from 8 August to 13 September, unbilled, and the house sells out. A Chorus Line has opened the same season and takes most of the attention anyway.
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1979
London, first attempt
The Cambridge Theatre stages it for around 600 performances. It is a success, not yet a fixture.
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1992
Long Beach, and a young director
The Long Beach Civic Light Opera revives it, directed by Rob Marshall. Ten years later Marshall will direct the film.
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May 1996
A concert staging at City Center
Encores! puts it on with the orchestra on stage, the cast in black, and nothing else. The staging was a budget decision. It became the show.
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14 November 1996
Broadway again — and this time it does not stop
The Encores! version transfers to the Richard Rodgers, directed by Walter Bobbie with choreography by Ann Reinking in the style of Bob Fosse. Reinking plays Roxie, Bebe Neuwirth Velma, James Naughton Billy Flynn, Joel Grey Amos.
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1997
Six Tony Awards
Best Revival of a Musical, Neuwirth, Naughton, Bobbie, Reinking, and Ken Billington for lighting — more than any revival had won before.
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18 November 1997
London, second attempt: fifteen years
The Adelphi opens with Ute Lemper as Velma and Ruthie Henshall as Roxie, Henry Goodman as Billy Flynn and Nigel Planer as Amos. It moves to the Cambridge in April 2006 and finally closes on 1 September 2012.
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27 December 2002
The film wins Best Picture
Rob Marshall directs Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah and John C. Reilly. Six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Zeta-Jones, and $306.8 million at the box office.
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29 January 2003
The revival moves into the Ambassador
After the Richard Rodgers and the Shubert, it settles into the house on West 49th Street where it still plays.
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23 November 2014
It passes Cats
Performance number 7,486 makes it the longest-running American musical in Broadway history. Only The Phantom of the Opera has run longer on Broadway, and the count is past eleven thousand.
Dates, houses and performance counts follow the show's own listings and the Wikipedia articles "Chicago (musical)" and "Chicago (2002 film)", read 29 August 2026. Where the sources disagree on a number, the smaller one is printed.
A century on, the tickets are still the point: where it plays today.