Chicago: stage vs screen

Rob Marshall's 2002 film of Chicago, with Renée Zellweger as Roxie, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma, and Richard Gere as Billy Flynn, won six Academy Awards including Best Picture. It follows the same story of two murderesses chasing fame, but it rethinks how the songs fit in and drops a good part of the score. These are the main differences from the Broadway show.

Stage

Broadway musical (1975)

Screen

Chicago (2002), directed by Rob Marshall

1. The songs happen in Roxie's head

On Broadway, Chicago is staged as a vaudeville show, with each number performed straight to the audience. The film keeps the vaudeville style but presents most numbers as fantasies playing out in Roxie's imagination, cutting between a glittering stage and gritty real-life scenes in the jail and courtroom.

2. Several songs are cut

"A Little Bit of Good," "My Own Best Friend," "I Know a Girl," "Me and My Baby," "When Velma Takes the Stand," and the reprise of "I Can't Do It Alone" are not in the film. Only an instrumental of "Me and My Baby" plays while Roxie enjoys her pregnancy headlines. Velma loses the most: her solos "I Know a Girl" and "When Velma Takes the Stand" are gone, along with her duet with Roxie, "My Own Best Friend."

3. "Class" was filmed and then dropped

Velma and Mama Morton's duet "Class" was shot and recorded for the soundtrack album, but it was cut from the theatrical release. It survives as a deleted scene on the home video release and was restored in an extended version shown on NBC in 2005.

4. A new song: "I Move On"

Kander and Ebb wrote "I Move On" for the film, sung by Roxie and Velma over the end credits. It is not part of the stage score, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

5. Mary Sunshine keeps her secret

On stage, the gushing reporter Mary Sunshine is usually played by a man, and the show reveals this near the end. The film casts Christine Baranski as Mary, drops the reveal, and cuts her solo "A Little Bit of Good."

6. A different opening and new faces

The film opens with Velma performing "All That Jazz" at the Onyx nightclub on the night of her arrest, while Roxie watches from the crowd, so the two women's stories are linked from the first scene. It also adds a bandleader (Taye Diggs) who introduces the numbers, and casts Lucy Liu as Kitty, the heiress whose crime briefly steals Roxie's headlines.

7. Billy's courtroom tricks become a tap dance

On stage, "Tap Dance" is an early Act 1 number for Roxie, Amos, and the boys. The film moves the idea to the trial: when Velma and Mama hand Roxie's diary to the prosecutor, Billy discredits it in a sequence staged as "A Tap Dance," with Gere tap dancing through his courtroom maneuvers.

8. A nod to the original Velma

Chita Rivera, who created Velma in the 1975 Broadway production, makes a brief cameo in the film as Nickie. Catherine Zeta-Jones won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Velma.

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