Bianca Marroquín will take over as Roxie Hart in Chicago at the Ambassador Theatre on Monday, November 16, rejoining a Broadway company in which she has already given more than 4,000 performances, in that role and as Velma Kelly.
The production announced her return on October 20. The date is the day after Reece Weaver’s last scheduled performance: Weaver’s run as Roxie was extended twice, the second time to Sunday, November 15, so the role changes hands overnight, from a Sunday to a Monday.
Few performers know this staging as well. Marroquín has moved between Roxie and Velma in the Broadway company over more than two decades, which makes her one of the few actresses to have played both of the musical’s female leads, and her history with the show takes in the Ambassador, the Shubert Theatre and the national tour. She was also the first Mexican actress to take a starring role on Broadway.
Her other Broadway credits are In the Heights and The Pajama Game, and in New York she has also played Anita in West Side Story at Carnegie Hall. In Mexico City her credits include Beauty and the Beast, Rent, The Phantom of the Opera, The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. Her Roxie on tour won her a Helen Hayes Award, and her Rose Alvarez in Bye Bye Birdie an IRNE Award. On screen she has appeared in One Life to Live and Fosse/Verdon.
Her first night back falls on the same date as the production’s 30th-anniversary celebration: Chicago marks three decades on Broadway with a November 16 gala for the Entertainment Community Fund at the Ambassador.
She joins a principal company of Lissa deGuzman as Velma Kelly, Max von Essen as Billy Flynn, Natasha Yvette Williams as Matron “Mama” Morton, Red Concepción as Amos Hart and J. Workman as Mary Sunshine.
Produced by Barry and Fran Weissler, the revival has music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. It is directed by Walter Bobbie and choreographed by Ann Reinking, with sets by John Lee Beatty, costumes by William Ivey Long, lighting by Ken Billington and sound by Scott Lehrer. Casting is by DEFINE/Duncan Stewart, CSA, and Alecia Parker is executive producer. The production won six Tony Awards in 1997, Best Musical Revival among them, as well as the Grammy Award for Best Musical Cast Recording, and it is now the longest-running American musical in Broadway history.
The musical is set in 1920s Chicago. Roxie, a housewife who dances in nightclubs, shoots the man she has been seeing on the side when he threatens to end the affair. Facing trial, she hires the most media-minded defense attorney in town, and together they turn a murder charge into a run of front-page stories, to the fury of her fellow inmate Velma.
Performances are Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7pm, Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 2:30pm and 8pm, and Sundays at 2pm and 7pm. The Ambassador Theatre box office, at 219 W. 49th St., is open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 8:30pm and Sunday from 12pm to 7:30pm, and tickets are also sold on the production’s official site, ChicagoTheMusical.com.
