After weeks of hard work, actors, dancers, backstage crew, and musicians were ready to ‘razzle dazzle’ the crowd. 

Families, friends, and supporters took their seats in the James Dunne Auditorium in anticipation of this year's DHS musical: “Chicago: Teen Edition." 

“Chicago” first premiered on Broadway in 1975.  A show full of jazz, dancing, murder, trial, and scandal, the plot follows two women, Velma Kelly (Senior Areti Tiglianidis), and Roxie Hart (Junior Jackie Luszcz), who are both involved in murder cases all while working to gain fame in the flashy city of Chicago while being followed by the press, chasing newspaper headlines, and trying to escape prison. 

Watching the performance last weekend, one thing stood out: the dancing. The choreography was very well done and visually entertaining. It caught my attention throughout the entirety of the musical. What impressed me the most was the partner lifts, some of which were at a high level of difficulty and added another layer of excellence to the performance; they surprised me with a lot of them! I was also impressed by the featured dancers, many of whom do not regularly perform on stage, but truly brought their best performances. Their dancing, tumbling, and lift work added a lot to the show, and it was cool to see all the fun tricks done on stage!

I'd like to commend the hard work of the dance captains, Mollie Maguire and Katie O’Connor. Both worked incredibly hard in this performance, being featured in every, if not almost every, dance number and also contributing hours leading up to the performance to work on creating choreography and helping the rest of the ensemble shine. 

Of course, the acting in the show was also outstanding. The leads of the show, Jackie Luszcz (Roxie Hart) and Areti Tiglianidis (Velma Kelly), were amazing and portrayed their characters excellently. Whenever Roxie would have a song, Jackie’s facial expressions displayed her feelings almost better than her words did. Throughout the entire show, I felt like I knew the characters well from the way they were portrayed by all of the actors. From facial expressions to accents, the acting made the story shine. 

The costuming and the visuals were outstanding as well. The costumes made the setting of the “roaring 20s” era clear, and all of them had certain details about them that made them stand out, like the hats in certain numbers or the props used, or the hairstyle. The hair for this show also stood out to me, with hairstyles matching the period perfectly but also in a way that worked for every individual actor. 

Along with how the actors looked, the visuals on stage were also amazing. With different colored lights, moving jail cells, and huge light boards, the set for this production really stood out and helped me feel like I was in the story, and kept me entertained the whole time. None of these things would be possible without the tech crew, who worked extremely hard behind the scenes to make this production shine and did a wonderful job.

I would also like to give a hand to the pit band, who did an amazing job. I got to sit pretty close to the band, and I could tell that they all had worked hard, and their music helped bring the show together. While the band was mostly adults, there were four student musicians (sophomores Rosie Plunkett, Zoey Savov-Wong, Kaegan McLeod, and senior Adam Lagare), and they each did a wonderful job playing in a more professional setting, and their work stood out to me. 

While one can appreciate the show just from one watch, my appreciation for it grew much deeper from watching the extreme amount of hard work everyone in this musical was pouring into the production. So many things went into putting this show together, all of them requiring a lot of dedication. The actors and ensemble, of course, spend long hours at rehearsals every week. And the backstage crew has to make sure everything is running smoothly and bring the show to life. Getting to see all of the hard work and all the moving parts that went into this show come to life on stage was great to see.