PRIME CUTS: Lost Gem from “Chicago”
The Broadway revival of "Chicago". Photo by Jeremy Daniel.
We’re kicking off a new series today! (Cue the confetti cannon…but don’t point it at me. The hair, you know…)
I love getting the chance to see behind-the-curtain of how a show comes together. The creation of a musical, in particular, is a maddening and marvelous thing, each piece carefully balanced against the next like an enormous, four-dimensional quilt. One song out of place, no matter how wonderful, can upset the feel of the whole work. So one of the best ways to learn why a show succeeds is to look at songs that didn’t make it into the “final” production. (It’s like going on a bad date; it helps you learn what you don’t want…and sometimes at least you get a good meal out of it.)
In that spirit, let’s take a listen to our first Prime Cut, “10 Percent”, a song snipped from the long-running smash Chicago during it’s out of town tryouts. It was sung by a character called “The Agent” whose role was similarly sliced. Here, the song is performed by the delightful David Hyde Pierce at a salute to John Kander…
