Dingbat Theatre returns with jazzy ‘Chicago’ in new Venice venue

Since its debut in 2021 during the height of the COVID pandemic, the Dingbat Theatre Project has produced a series of inventive and unusually staged musicals at several different venues in the Sarasota area.

But it now has a place it can call home, at least for the next year, at the Loveland Center in Venice, where Dingbat co-founder Luke Manuel McFatrich is leading an adult day training program.

The performance venue will open with the company’s production of the jazzy John Kander and Fred Ebb classic “Chicago,” which McFatrich worried might be “a little racy” for the center. “But we were told we can make this theater our home.”

McFatrich is co-directing the show with his Dingbat co-founder Brian F. Finnerty, who also is the choreographer and costume designer for the musical, set in 1920s Chicago, where women who get arrested for murder manage to turn their notoriety into celebrity and careers on stage.

Tahlia Chinault plays Roxie Hart, who is accused of killing her boyfriend, and Amanda Heisey plays her rival and eventual partner Velma Kelly, whose own performing career briefly ended after she killed her husband. McFatrich also plays Matron “Mama” Morton, who runs the local jail, and Finnerty portrays the manipulative attorney Billy Flynn. The cast also includes Kelly Leissler as Roxie’s husband, Amos Hart, and Cory L. Woomert as gossip reporter Mary Sunshine. Michelle Kasanofsky is the musical director.

Velma is a role Heisey has wanted to play for years. “I’ve been listening to the cast album for like 5,000 years and I’ve wanted to play her for that long,” she said. Heisey was cast in a production at Venice Theatre that was halted by COVID in 2020. “We had already started rehearsing and it was nice to get into it and I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to play the role, so this is really exciting,” she said.

McFatrich said he was surprised his company got the rights to produce the show, but it is also a major undertaking for a company that previously produced “Shrek, The Musical,” “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “The SpongeBob Musical.”

“We talked about whether we could and should do this. But this is a big passion project,” he said.

A long history for ‘Chicago’

“Chicago” originally opened on Broadway in 1975 with legendary dancers Gwen Verdon as Roxie and Chita Rivera as Velma under the direction of Bob Fosse. But it was overshadowed by the arrival of the ground-breaking “A Chorus Line.”

A new concert-style production that originated at the Encores series at New York City Center in 1996 quickly moved to Broadway, where it is still running after 27 years. It is now the longest-running American musical in Broadway history.

Dingbat is transforming the performance space, which will hold about 120 people, into a “1920s dilapidated speakeasy. We may even give people a password that they can use when they come in,” McFatrich said. There will be a bar, tables and chairs.

“It’s a lot more intimate in terms of the relationship between the audience and performers,” he said. “Sometimes the actors look right in the audience members’ eyes. It’s a cool way to tell the story.”

Chinault, who has been performing in area theaters since she was a child, said she has the Fosse spirit and style in her blood. “I share a birthday with Fosse,” she said, adding that she was hesitant to do a deep dive into her character’s personality.

“I truly love going into shows cold, as green as I can be, so it is an organic interpretation and I’m reacting to the people around me,” she said. Of course with a show that is already so familiar (she was featured in a Manatee Players production), it is not all new to her.

She said Leissler, as her sad sack husband “will make me cry every single night. And Amanda, with that deadpan sass. Oh, I live for it.”

‘Chicago’

Music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. Directed by Luke Manuel McFatrich and Brian F. Finnerty. Presented July 19-Aug. 6 at Loveland Center Venice Campu’s Performing Arts Theatre, 157 S. Havana Rd., Venice. $25. A speakeasy package including reserved, premium seating, champagne and more are $40. dingbattheatre.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Dingbat Theatre Project creates speakeasy aura for musical ‘Chicago’