Chicago 50 - No. 18 - Rehearsals

Chris Chadman, Ron Schwinn, Gwen Verdon, Gene Foote, Dick Korthaze rehearse onstage following a musicians’ strike which shut down nine Broadway musicals for 25 days in 1975.

Rehearsals began October 26, 1974 at Broadway Arts. After the first table read, Fosse was admitted to the hospital for chest pains. His doctors said he was going to have a heart attack. Fosse's doctors called Broadway Arts to inform Gwen. Gwen was found in a studio alone with Chita, knitting needles in hand, practicing for the courtroom scene. She calmly received the news, changed her clothes, and left the studio for the hospital. Although she and Bob had been separated several years at this point, they were still married. Ultimately, on November 15, 1974, Bob underwent bypass surgery, and Chicago was postponed.

Gwen did her best to keep the cast together, and spirits up, but the dancers needed to find work and short gigs in the meantime. She feared that if the cast disbanded, the show would be further delayed once Bob recuperated.

In March of 1975, rehearsals for Chicago resumed in a much darker and more tense atmosphere. After having to face his own mortality, all the dancers described to mood of rehearsals being very different from the more joyful process during Pippin.

--FOSSE by Sam Wasson

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Rehearsal schedule. Verdon Fosse Collection at the Library of Congress

From -Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera:

"The professional reunion of Bobby and Gwen, on top of his recent accolades, added to the expectations for Chicago. You could see them weighing heavily on him when he walked into the Broadway Arts for that first week of rehearsals. He didn't look well. A steady diet of amphetamines, junk food, sleepless nights, countless cigarettes, and the never-ending quest for perfection can do that to a guy. I've worked with many directors who were less self-destructive than Bobby but no less obsessive. In my entire career, I have yet to collaborate with a director and/or choreographer who was completely satisfied. As the saying goes, ‘Shows are never finished. They just open.’

"Once Bobby recuperated from his heart attack, we went to work. It took me a while to get used to his style, which was much more contained and intense than it had been in Charity. It didn't help that Bobby wasn't one to give a lot. Forever dressed in black— one day he showed up in blue and I excused myself to get my sunglasses — he was available but not very demonstrative. I love to fly across the stage, so at first I found his choreography for Chicago strange, restrictive, and difficult to learn. Tremendous focus and constant repetition were needed to get it right. And it helped to watch the other dancers. At times, rehearsals looked like a hall of mirrors."

"Bobby's brush with death had thrown him into a deep depression that couldn't help but affect Chicago. Behind the razzle-dazzle, Bobby was determined to leach out any hint of sentiment. Though the music was ripe and rowdy, the show itself became chillier, meaner, and darker. Bobby had always been a man obsessed with his mortality. Now while we were learning his choreography, he was locked in his own dance of death. He would later explore it in his semiautobiographical film All That Jazz, with Tony to ask Bobby to make it faster. They hadn’t written the songs to be played at such a sloooooow pace. There was an upside to it, however. At Bobby's urging, I did learn to take my time while onstage. Like most great directors, he was not afraid of silence, confident that the stage presence of the actor or dancer could fill the void. Let the audience come to you, was his mantra. Don't even try to meet them halfway. Of course, he was right. One of the great contradictions of Bobby was that he had so much contempt for a business he was so good at.

"The development of Chicago got even more difficult once we embarked to Philadelphia for the tryout. It's a long standing tradition of shows to go out of town rather than open cold in New York, which would have been its own form of open-heart surgery. There were so many kinks in the show to work out that it was better to do it far away from the prying eyes of the theater buffs who never wasted a chance to take a potshot. (It's even worse now with the internet. More like a colonoscopy.) One of the major kinks in the show was, quite simply, that it was too kinky. Bobby loved to simulate sex onstage. That made sense when he did it in Pippin. But for some reason, he thought to embroider Roxie's courtroom scene, featuring the song "Razzle Dazzle" and a brilliant turn by Jerry Orbach as Roxies slick lawyer, with writhing bodies and orgasmic moans. It distracted from the moral of the show: inviting the audience to own up to being blinded by the flimflam of show business.

"Watching a rehearsal from the back of the Forrest Theatre, I was shocked and so were John and Freddy. We couldn't see what seminaked bodies in flagrante delicto had to do with the scene. Freddy and John took it upon themselves to try to convince Bobby to cut the embellishments.

For their pains, they were subjected to a nasty tirade from him. They came back fuming. I heard John tell Freddy: 'Let's go back to New York tonight. No show is worth dying for.' At that moment, the three of us made a pact: 'If one of us goes, we all go.'

"I suppose we meant it at the time. In the process of getting any Broadway show on its feet, the pressures are so intense and the emotions are so raw that these kind of vows are not uncommon. Instead, we soldiered on in Philly, rehearsing and putting in changes during the day and performing for audiences at night. And, oh, were there ever changes! An entire role-an agent played by David Rounds -was cut. Songs were replaced and new scenes were written. The show was getting even meaner. It was supposed to be cynical, but now Bobby was wringing out the joy as well.

"The relationship between him and Gwen frayed so much that after one tense disagreement, she said, "They can pack his heart in sawdust for all I care." The three weeks we spent out of town seemed like three years. Poor Tony Stevens was tasked with giving us notes. It got to the point where he was hesitant to give them out at the hotel after a performance. One night I opened the door and standing there was a wrinkled old man. Tony had drawn black circles under his eyes and lines across his face.

"'Just. One. More. Note,' he said.

"Our nerves were shot, our bones ached from dancing on a raked stage, we were bleary-eyed from no sleep and forgetful from having to memorize so many changes. Thank God for one saving grace: the reduced rate for booze at the Variety Club at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. That was our refuge. It was also where John and Freddy came up with a smashing song for the finale of Chicago. It gave us the ammo to fight another day."

--Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera