Chicago – The Musical Announces 'Criminally Great' Cast!
Press Release – Sandra Roberts
The razzle dazzle is back—and bolder than ever. The global smash-hit Chicago the Musical today announces its 'criminally great' cast ahead of its strictly limited season touring Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin starting next month.
Taking centre stage in this bold new production is a stellar line-up of Aotearoa talent, led by entertainment icon Jackie Clarke as the indomitable Mamma Morton, alongside musical theatre powerhouse Nomi Cohen (Kinky Boots, We Will Rock You) as the sly and ambitious Roxie Hart, and Lily Bourne (Shortland Street, Fun Home) as the sharp and sizzling Velma Kelly.
They're joined by screen and stage favourite Joel Tobeck (Shortland Street, One Lane Bridge, Avatar: The Way of Water) as the slick, silver-tongued lawyer Billy Flynn, seasoned actor Andy Grainger (Jersey Boys, The Brokenwood Mysteries) as Roxie's loyal husband Amos Hart, burlesque star Hannah Tasker-Poland (Legend of the Seeker, Ash vs Evil Dead) as the fiery inmate Liz, and veteran performer Stephen Butterworth (Pop-up Globe, Lord of the Rings) as the stern but theatrical Judge.
Helmed by acclaimed Kiwi theatre director Michael Hurst ONZM, this striking new staging of Chicago promises to deliver all the scandal, sass and showstopping musical numbers that have made it a global sensation—including All That Jazz, Cell Block Tango, and Razzle Dazzle. Joining him in sculpting the show's dynamic visual world is celebrated choreographer Shona McCullagh MNZM while the elaborate set is being created by award-winning designer Chris Reddington.
Premiering at Auckland's Bruce Mason Centre from 31 July, then heading to Christchurch's Isaac Theatre Royal from 17 August, and finally Dunedin's Regent Theatre from 29 August, this is a strictly limited run of one of the most popular musical theatre shows in history.
Featuring a cast of top-tier singers, dancers, and actors, this is a full-scale professional production set to light up the stage with its intoxicating mix of 1920s glamour, Prohibition-era grit, and dazzling choreography.
'Chicago the Musical is one of the world's most iconic stage shows. It's a delicious blend of showbiz, crime, and satire—with a dream cast to match. We can't wait to share this knockout production with audiences across the country,' says producer Ben McDonald.
Based on real events and created by the legendary Broadway trio John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Bob Fosse, Chicago is a searing satire on celebrity and justice, set in a world where fame is the ultimate currency and murder is just the opening act.
Chicago centres on Roxie Hart, a chorus girl who dreams of being a vaudeville star. She's cheating on her sweet but dim-witted husband named Amos — and when her lover tries to end their affair, she kills him in a fit of rage. Getting thrown in the Cook County Jail seems like a surefire end to Roxie's dreams of stardom, but her sentence ends up being her ticket to fame.
Her lawyer, the smooth-talking Billy Flynn, helps her concoct a defence that earns the press' sympathy and gets her face on the cover of every newspaper in Chicago. And while in jail, Roxie meets Velma Kelly, an established vaudeville star who murdered her husband and sister. The women begin as rivals, as Roxie seeks to steal Velma's lawyer (Billy) and her spotlight, but they come around to an unlikely alliance.
Chicago is a spectacle full of social satire, intrigue, love, betrayal, rivalry and friendship, a pageant of music and dance that adroitly shifts between reality and fantasy, as Roxie Hart's world moves from prison to the courtroom to the stage.
With a trophy shelf that includes six Tonys, two Oliviers, a Grammy, and six Academy Awards, Chicago is the longest-running musical revival in Broadway history and continues to captivate audiences worldwide.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Spinoff
2 days ago
- The Spinoff
‘So fulfilling': Xavier Horan on making new spiritual comedy Dead Ahead
The star of new TVNZ comedy Dead Ahead takes us through his life in television. Few New Zealand actors can attribute their career to the early work of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Xavier Horan certainly does. As a young aspiring actor, Horan's first ever audition – for a BBC documentary series – saw him choose to reenact the dramatic final scene from his favourite movie, Commando. 'Arnold Schwarzenegger has come down to the sewer, and his daughter is in there, played by Alyssa Milano,' Horan remembers. Sadly he didn't get the role, but his love of watching action movies before he goes to sleep at night has never changed. 'Those are the foundations of my career. I've always got to go back and remember them.' Since those early days, Horan's acting career has taken him out of the sewer and into everything from Shortland Street to The Dead Lands, The Bad Seed to Westside. Horan's latest project is new TVNZ series Dead Ahead, a comedy about a family that returns to Aotearoa after living in London for several years. When the Wharehoka whānau arrive at their new home, their presence sparks a shift in the delicate balance between the spiritual and physical realms. Strange things begin to happen, and before long, three tīpuna appear in the household to guide the whānau in the right direction. Horan stars alongside Miriama Smith, Nicola Kawana, Te Kohe Tuhaka, Pana Hema Taylor and Scotty Cotter, and the show is produced by his wife, Nicole Horan. Dead Ahead's dialogue includes both reo Māori and English, and Horan loves that the show focuses on the connection between the spiritual and physical worlds. 'As Māori, we have this belief that there is a spiritual world, and when our time comes, our body may stay here but our spirit still lives.' Filled with interesting and quirky characters, Dead Ahead is a gentle, humorous exploration of how our ancestors can influence our lives in the present. Before Dead Ahead launches on TVNZ+ next week, we sat down with Horan and asked him all about his life in television, including the cartoon he loved as a kid and the hit show he couldn't stop watching. My earliest TV memory is… It's 1986, I'm four and I've just got home from kōhanga reo. My mum was going to teachers training college, so I'd be with my nanny. She was a little old kuia, who was quite a grumpy old lady. She was a teacher at the kōhanga reo, so I had to walk with her and walk back, and then I'd get home in time to watch Rawiri Paratene on Play School. The TV show I used to rush home from school to watch was… Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I think it was 1989 and I was in standard two. TV3 had just come out, and one of the first shows in the afternoon was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was like, 'holy crap, this is awesome'. A moment from my own career that haunts me is… At Shakespeare's Globe in London. Rawiri Paratene and Rachel House cast a whole lot of us, and it was my first time acting on stage. The play was Troilus and Cressida and I played Hector. Maaka Pohatu and I had this big fight scene, and there's a lot of old people in their little bright yellow coats, just looking up at you. One night it was quite frosty, and I came flying in the air, thrusting at Maaka's head. My toe landed right on the edge of the stage, I skidded and ended up falling off the stage into these three old ladies. Luckily it wasn't with too much force. The TV ad I can't stop thinking about is… Tina from Turners is pretty funny at the moment. The last TV show I binge watched was… The Day of the Jackal with Eddie Redmayne. I just came back from Jordan with my wife, who was making a documentary series called Earth Oven with Temuera Morrison. On the flight there, I just couldn't stop watching the Day of the Jackal. I had to finish it on the way back. My favourite TV moment from my own career is… I loved doing the boxing fights on Westside. I got to help choreograph the stunts in The Convert with Lee Tamahori, and it's a dance. It has to be well-rehearsed, because we can't get hurt. I've been fortunate enough to do all my stunts and now be a stunt coordinator. I love all of that stuff. My favourite TV project is… Dead Ahead, for so many reasons. It was so fulfilling. It was made out here in South Auckland, so for once I was not traveling to bloody Bethells or Henderson and going to work was only a 15 minute drive. We started and finished every day with a karakia. The key marker for me is that at the wrap party, everyone was so grateful, so happy. That's what I valued, that human experience. No one was bickering, no one had problems, and the mahi was fun. The TV show I loved and wished I was involved with is… The Night Agent. I hear they're doing season three, I've got to give Luciane [Buchanan] a call, man. I really like that show. That drama, that intrigue, the action, the fight scenes are awesome, all the twists and the turns. The show I'll never watch, no matter how many people tell me to is… EastEnders. It just brings up memories. I feel like whenever EastEnders was on, there was always trouble. The last show I watched on TV was… The Studio with Seth Rogen. They got a lot of great cameos. It's a really cool, interesting insight into the Hollywood industry, the decisions they have to make and some of the lies they tell to save their arse.
The Spinoff
4 days ago
- The Spinoff
Review: Black Faggot is as relevant now as it was 10 years ago
Sam Brooks reviews the revival of Victor Rodger's seminal play. I remember seeing Victor Rodger's Black Faggot over a decade ago at the Basement Theatre studio. The show had a simple concept – the queer experience told through a Samoan lens, with two actors playing multiple characters, loosely linked by having some relationship to queerness, be they queer people themselves, or simply being in a room with another queer person. It was a hit. The show sold out that initial run in the 65-seat theatre, and toured around the country for over two years with multiple actors switching in and out of the roles, including Beulah Koale, Shimpal Lelisi, Taofia Pelesasa and Fasitua Amosa. It resonated with audiences not just because of the performances and Rodger's trademark sense of humour – absolutely that of a gay man raised on sitcoms and classic Hollywood, but provocatively cheeky – but because it was the first time that most of its audience had ever seen this particular experience onstage. New Zealand is a country that is notoriously bad at reviving plays, even successful ones. Whether it's due to a lack of spaces, funding, or audiences is anybody's guess – it's probably an awful mix of all three. Too often plays get initial runs before all that remains are hazy memories, with the occasional drama nerd pulling a scene or monologue out for an audition or NCEA exam. That's why it's a treat to see any work, really, but especially a work like this, revived. While Black Faggot went around the country for quite a long time – if you didn't see it and wanted to, it's absolutely on you – theatre audiences are different 10 years on. We're in a renaissance of Pasifika theatre, heralded in part by Rodger's championing of other playwrights and poets himself, and Black Faggot is absolutely part of that legacy that deserves to be seen, even re-examined, to quantify that renaissance. Ten years ago, Rodger was one of New Zealand's leading playwrights. Now, he's still that, but he's got an ONZM and is an Arts Laureate to boot. (Director Anapela Polaitavao also, not coincidentally, also has an ONZM and is an Arts Laureate.) The current production sees actors Jake Tupu (Auckland Theatre Company's production of Dawn Raids) and newcomer Gideon Smith take on the kaleidoscope of roles that Rodger has gifted them with. And they really are gifts for the actors; Rodger gives them sharp dialogue and sharper punchlines, and characters across the age, gender and sexuality spectrum. In one moment they can be playing a gay couple arguing about 'mess' on a wall, and in the next, a parent questioning why their son has a poster of Sonny Bill Williams on his roof. Tupu is particularly excellent in inhabiting his roles, although if there's one thing that this production highlights, it's that one actor, Smith in this instance, is often playing set-up to the other actor's spike. It unbalances the production slightly, but never enough to truly detract from the experience. Polataivao lends the production the sort of elegance and grace that an audience has come to expect from her previous work, including Wild Dogs Under My Skirt and The Savage Coloniser Show. The staging is simple and unobtrusive – a stained glass square for the actors to perform in, a large hibiscus flower blooming towards the back of the stage. There are no bells and whistles to the show, and there needn't be. This is ultimately a show that is about characters simply living their lives, queer or otherwise, and frankly, many of those characters are theatrical enough to not need any outside support. A show like Black Faggot shouldn't still be as relevant. Like its spiritual predecessor, Toa Fraser's Bare, it should feel like it captures a moment in time, like lightning in a bottle. But whereas Bare has aged into an absolutely lovely, non-controversial picture of urban New Zealand in the 90s, Black Faggot feels as though it could have been written yesterday (with some jokes ageing like cheap wine, as jokes unfortunately tend to do). The characters and conversations that Rodger is putting in front of us still feel startling, even new. Broadly speaking, queer people still face prejudice and in 2025, there are parts of society that feel even less safe, less open to these kinds of conversation than we were back in 2013. The pockets of society that would been shocked by the lives on display in Black Faggot back then are still likely to be shocked, and are likely even more entrenched in the worldview that allows them to be so. At least on opening night, the unobtrusive but still noticeable presence of a security guard outside Q Theatre was a reminder that the subject matter that Rodger is exploring has become even more polarised amongst a vocal, active, minority. A decade ago, no such security was necessary. There is a glimmer of light within that relevance, however – and it's the thing that was strongest about Black Faggot all those years ago. It's that it isn't a big show. It isn't a show where characters move mountains, metaphorically or otherwise. It isn't a show with heroes and villains. All the characters portrayed onstage, whether they're a young kid pleading with God, a couple fighting about an unfortunate mess on the wallpaper, or a mother wrestling with her kid's sexuality, are just people living their lives. As queer people have always done, and despite some shitty people who think otherwise, will continue to do. That reminder will never not be relevant, and will always be welcome.
NZ Herald
18-06-2025
- NZ Herald
Media Insider podcast: TVNZ chief executive Jodi O'Donnell on the future of Shortland Street, the 6pm news and a move into pay TV
TVNZ chief executive Jodi O'Donnell has opened up on the future of Shortland Street, the 6pm news, and a move into pay television in order to snare big sporting events, such as the Olympics. In our latest Media Insider podcast, O'Donnell assesses her eventful first 18 months as the boss
