SAVE THE DATE: Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Wollman Hall, New School
65 West 11th Street
6:30pm – 9:00pm

Chicago, The Play aka Play Ball

Last reading of the year! Go out with a bang!

Roxie Hart’s original story was first a play dramatized by Maurine Dallas Watkins. It opened on Broadway at the Music Box on December 30, 1926. It would almost be half a century before Bob Fossee and Kander and Ebb would obtain the rights for the musical version starring Gwen Verdon.

Ms. Watkins was a crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune and her sensational columns documenting the real trials of two women who later became the models for Roxie and Velma were so popular that sdhe decided to write a play.

Brooks Atkinson reviewed it on December 31, 1925:

“Chicago is not a melodrama but a satirical comedy on the administration of justice through the fetid channels of newspaper publicity– of photographers, “sob-sisters_ feature stunts, standardized prevarication and general vulgarity. In the composition of her raucous lampoon, Miss Watkins has forgotten none of the “old hokum” or the blatant chicanery typical– it is alleged– of the trials of ‘beautiful murderesses.'”