Murder, she sang Theatre-By-the-Sea’s Chicago has snap and verve BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

Mighty brave of Theatre-by-the-Sea to mount the musical Chicago while the recent movie version is still echoing in the pop-cult imagination. Not to worry. This rendition is snazzy and jazzy enough to satisfy the most demanding toe-tapper.

Chicago is the big-budget dance extravaganza of the barn theater’s line-up, directed and choreographed by Brett Smock, who gave us the respectable if modestly hoofed Footloose at TBTS last summer. This year the production is far more ambitious, as befits expectations. The dozen-plus dancers, whether outfitted in black-mesh shirts or campy attitudes, do more than show off their workouts and long-stem high-kicks. There’s enough talent and hoofing chops on deck for two musicals, and the Bob Fosse-inspired choreography, all jutting limbs and sassy poses, is executed with snap and verve.

Based on a 1926 play by a Chicago Tribune crime reporter, the 1975 return to Broadway as a musical starred arch-redhead Gwen Verdon as death row doxy Roxie Hart. The original version was done as a comedy, but the stereotyped characters in the melodramatic tale were promoted to cultural archetypes in the musical by dispensing with realistic narrative. Bang-bang! — she plugs her rat-bastid boyfriend, and we get only the choicest bits of what follows.

As Roxie, Kendra Madigan is animated and inventive with reactions and expressions, as winsome a killer who ever hired a big-bucks lawyer to make over her image. Madigan gives us a Roxie so gleeful at the prospect of getting away with murder, even when she’s not cavorting with chorus boys in production numbers, that it’s hard to not hope she succeeds.

Roxie’s way out is through star lawyer Billy Flynn (Christopher Carl), an unscrupulous sleazoid who has never had a female client that he didn’t get off the hook. With the best singing voice in the show, Carl could get away with just preening and sucking his teeth in imaginary mirrors, but he lets a little boy peek out of the charm now and then, so here’s another scamp to forgive.

In our age of TV shock show confessions and best sellers by bad guys batting their eyes for forgiveness, Chicago reminds us that they’ve always been able to fool enough of the people enough of the time with the right public image. In "Cell Block Tango," six murderess candidates for such a Get Out of Jail Free card entertain us by describing why their hubbies deserved their fates. But it’s toward the end of Act One that we get the funniest snapshot of their idea of justice. In "We Both Reached for the Gun," Roxie is sitting on her lawyer’s lap like a ventriloquist’s dummy, spouting her alibi as note-taking reporters buzz around them, like bees on honey.

Roxie’s alter ego among the homicidal hussies is Velma Kelly, whom Roxie is displacing as murderess of the month in both the headlines and the attentions of their mutual lawyer. She was played terrifically on press night by stand-in Robin Levine. Levine makes Velma a tough broad down to the bone, good contrast for Roxie’s bad-girl veneer. There’s convincing chemistry in their duos, especially "Hot Honey Rag," but she’s also a crowd-pleaser in the first curtain closer, "I Can’t Do It Alone."

Most supporting players are strong in this production, although Margery Beddow’s prison matron, Mama Morton, doesn’t deliver the bluesy boisterousness the role needs. As Amos, Roxie’s poor schlep of a husband, Jim Ferris delivers a very good "Mr. Cellophane," confident enough to linger with the audience. A knee-slapper is R. Lowe as Mary Sunshine, the "sob sister" reporter, who makes the throwaway song "A Little Bit of Good" a comic masterpiece. Speaking of throwaway opportunities, Kevin Steele is hilarious when he emerges from the chorus to represent the jurors, morphing into various pieces of clothing and bawdy or hangdog expressions.

The two-level set by scenic designer Jeff Modereger is crisply functional, especially the two firehouse poles that allow prompt entrances. But the production design could use more visual glitz, as befits the age of flappers and sequins, along the lines of the pink feather fans that ring lawyer Billy in a couple of numbers. Costume designer Laura Simcock was limited by the widow-black motif, but she gives plenty of variety to the chorus costumes, what there was of them, from sheer fabrics to black lace.

As informative notes in the program explain, movies were adapted from the play Chicago in 1927 and 1942 as well as last year. God bless America. That the country has long been bemused by people getting away with murder is a good sign. When it’s not funny is when we have to worry.