WINDY CITY
Despite popular myth, we’re not called the “Windy City” for our weather. New York speculators gave us the name around 1893: marveling at the boasts of Chicago developers about the “metropolis of the west,” they said that midwestern pitchmen could literally talk up a storm.
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Though the plot seems too fast and furious for a musical, Windy City not only makes room for songs but makes them welcome. Dick Vosburgh’s faithful book and witty lyrics and Tony Macaulay’s driving score efficiently push the plot from cliff-hanger to crisis, pausing along the way just long enough to deepen two relationships–between Hildy Johnson and his tony fiancee Natalie, and between sad-sack anarchist Earl Williams and Mollie Malloy, the courageous hooker who befriends and defends him.
If casting is half the battle, director Earley won the war early. Chicago’s sharpest character actors compete for laughs here: Larry Yando as the prissy Tribune reporter who fancies himself a misunderstood poet, Dale Morgan as the deliciously corrupt mayor, John LiBrizzi as the astonishingly incompetent sheriff, and Andrew J. Lupp as a befuddled flunky. Most delightful is Guy Adkins as the sweet-faced, timid anarchist killer; when he excuses himself in a squeaky voice because he fell through the ceiling or has to get up early (to be hanged), it’s as poignant as it is gut busting.
