The longest-running American musical on Broadway is adding fresh electricity to its marquee. This November, Chicago at the Ambassador Theatre will welcome two performers with very different superpowers and the same crowd-pleasing instinct: Tony winner Alex Newell stepping into Matron “Mama” Morton, and two-time Tony nominee Kate Baldwin taking over as Roxie Hart. The casting aligns one of the great belt voices of the modern stage with a musical theater leading lady celebrated for luminous phrasing and pinpoint comic timing, a pairing built to make a 29-year-old revival feel newly minted for holiday audiences.
Two arrivals, one well-oiled machine
The structure of Chicago rewards precisely this kind of mid-season shock to the system. The Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon blueprint, refined in Walter Bobbie’s 1996 revival, trusts the score and the performers more than spectacle. A band visible onstage, chairs for scenery, a few flourish costumes, and a razor-clean vocabulary of movement deliver the frame. Inside that frame, new stars can reset the temperature overnight. That is the show’s secret to longevity, and this November’s casting change follows the formula to the letter. Baldwin begins her run as Roxie Hart on November 10, while Newell joins a week later, on November 17, as Mama Morton. The handoff lands amid a busy fall for Broadway and positions Chicago to command attention in a season when attention is currency.
The timing is not incidental. As the revival approaches its 29th anniversary, the production has again constructed a bridge between generations of theatergoers. Returning fans know the contours of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s score by heart, from “All That Jazz” to “Razzle Dazzle.” First-timers often come for the marquee names, and stay for the immaculate clarity of Fosse’s criminal cabaret. A major casting announcement, precisely slotted before the holidays, keeps the machine humming. In an industry where grosses spike with fresh star wattage and dip when marketing grows stale, Chicago has turned renewal into routine.
What Baldwin brings to Roxie
Kate Baldwin’s reputation among Broadway devotees rests on a voice that glows without strain and a knack for intention between the notes. She earned Tony nominations for “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Hello, Dolly!,” and proved in shows like “Big Fish” that she can balance sincerity with wry humor. Roxie Hart, a vaudeville aspirant who weaponizes celebrity even as it threatens to consume her, demands precisely that balance. The character is not a villain so much as a mirror for anyone who has ever confused applause with absolution. Baldwin’s instrument, clear and ringing, can sand the character’s edges just enough to keep the audience close, while her comic instincts preserve the sting in the satire.
Roxie’s musical journey thrives on contrast. “Funny Honey” courts sympathy, “Me and My Baby” sparkles with a self-invented glow, and “Roxie” breaks the fourth wall with a grin that says she knew we would be there all along. Too much sweetness and the show’s cynicism curdles, too much bite and the heart leaves the room. Baldwin has a track record of living in that thin space where charm and calculation trade places line by line. In her hands, the microphone flourish, the half-turn toward the jury, the quicksilver glance to the bandstand, register as choices rather than habits. The show’s satire works best when Roxie is good at being Roxie, and Baldwin is an expert at success that feels earned rather than granted.
What Newell brings to Mama
Alex Newell’s voice, as audiences learned in “Once on This Island” and then again in “Shucked,” does not so much enter a room as reset its pressure. Mama Morton is one of those roles that lives on a single number for casual listeners, “When You’re Good to Mama,” yet reveals deeper seams for an actor who treats the character as more than a punchline. The jail matron is a fixer who understands the economics of attention before social media invented a vocabulary for it. She reads motive at first handshake. Newell’s gift is not merely volume, it is the ability to color a phrase with pleasure and threat at the same time. The laugh on a consonant can turn into leverage by the end of a measure. The applause, inevitable after the song’s last button, has a way of arriving with the audience already wondering what this Mama will do next.
There is also the matter of presence. Chicago asks Mama to enter like a verdict and then recede into the action like an invisible hand. Newell has shown an instinct for managing that energy, delivering moments of distilled release and then letting the show breathe. In a revival that trusts performers to hold the stage without armor, a singer who can gather attention and release it on schedule is an asset. Expect “Class,” the rueful duet with Velma, to land with fresh ache, and expect the ensemble to look more dangerous having met a Mama they would rather not cross.
Inside the company they are joining
Part of the fun, when Chicago introduces new stars, is watching the chemistry react in real time. The revival remains housed at the Ambassador Theatre, with a company calibrated to the show’s sleek engine. The current lineup includes Sophie Carmen-Jones delivering a coolly lethal Velma Kelly, Tam Mutu as a polished courtroom illusionist Billy Flynn, Raymond Bokhour rendering Amos Hart with the quiet dignity that makes “Mister Cellophane” land like a confession, and R. Lowe giving Mary Sunshine the exacting radiance that keeps the press room buzzing. Mira Sorvino’s recent tenure as Roxie has given the box office a pop and the audience a fresh lens on the role, and Angela Grovey has kept Mama’s ledger balanced with a smile that knows better. Newell arrives with the last notes of a fall concert engagement still ringing, and Baldwin follows a path well worn by screen and stage names who find in Roxie the rare part that loves them back while demanding they never blink.
Because the show’s visual palette is stripped to essentials, cast changes in Chicago function almost like new lighting cues. With Baldwin, certain scenes may tilt toward vaudeville tenderness before snapping shut. With Newell, the jailhouse may feel less like concrete and more like a club where the rules exist to be negotiated by anyone who can pay in favors, information, or applause. The revival has weathered decades by letting its actors leave fingerprints without smudging the frame. That is a delicate trick, and it is why casting announcements in this production resonate beyond the playbills.
Why this matters on Broadway now
Broadway has learned to market continuity as an event. Long runs depend on new reasons to say yes on a Friday night, and Chicago has turned guest star culture into something sturdier than novelty. When Pamela Anderson or Ashley Graham stepped into Roxie, the ticket line lengthened, but the show did not betray itself to do the trick. It stayed precise, it stayed playful, and it let the story argue what it has argued since 1975, that fame and guilt need only a camera to become the same thing. Bringing in Baldwin and Newell is less stunt than strategy, a way to honor a revival’s discipline by inviting artists who can exercise it at a high level.
There is also the ecosystem to consider. The season has been busy with limited runs, buzzy transfers, and the usual churn of fall openings angling for critical oxygen. In that scrum, a stalwart that knows how to make news without changing a set piece has an advantage. The holiday corridor amplifies that advantage, concentrating out-of-town audiences who recognize titles and follow familiar names. It is easy to forget, in a theater district that trades in the new, that the most reliable hit on the block is a satire about the oldest tricks in show business, performed with no tricks at all.
Roxie and Mama as counterweights
Roxie Hart and Mama Morton are not natural allies in the story. One sees the world as a stage, the other runs a stage in a jail. Their duet is really a negotiation, every smile an invoice. When a production lands actors with the right voltage in both roles, the plotline tightens of its own accord. Baldwin’s Roxie will likely treat attention like a currency that appreciates with use. Newell’s Mama will treat attention like a resource that depletes unless managed with care. Place those two philosophies in the same musical number and the air crackles. The press gaggle scenes sharpen, the courtroom pageant gleams, and the applause becomes part of the story, not a pause in it.
In practical terms, the audience benefits from a higher-contrast evening. Scenes that can sometimes blur into one another regain edges. The killer’s confession reads as performance art rather than convenience. The MC patter around the orchestra hits with renewed bite. Chicago has always depended on actors who can keep time in their bones, because the show’s timing, more than its choreography, delivers its thesis. With Baldwin and Newell, tempo will likely read as personality, and personality will carry the satire where speeches never could.
A revival that keeps telling on us
One reason Chicago outlasts trends is that it makes the audience complicit without shaming them. We clap when the characters clap for themselves, and we clap when the newsboys clap for a good headline. The distance between juror and fan collapses by design. New casting tilts the mirror. Baldwin’s ease with sincerity can make the audience realize how quickly they forgive charm. Newell’s vocal authority can make them recognize how readily they obey charisma. In a year that keeps asking whether celebrity is proof of anything but celebrity, the show’s satire reads as documentary. The murder weapons in Chicago are microphones and camera flashes. The bodies are reputations. The motive is attention.
This, too, is why the show remains a refuge for great voices and sharp comedians who want to work in a structure that respects them. The orchestra spots, the punctuation lights, the leanness of the staging, they all insist that the performer is the special effect. When a Roxie or a Mama lands a number, you feel the force of talent uncluttered by tricks. For theatergoers who grew up on the film and for those discovering the property onstage, that impact has a way of reminding them why Broadway exists at all. It is not elaborate scenery. It is a person, center stage, doing something difficult so well it looks easy.
What to listen for
The most obvious fireworks will arrive where you expect them. “Roxie” should snap with comic relish under Baldwin’s command, each aside played like a card turned over at just the right moment. “When You’re Good to Mama” will showcase Newell’s reservoir of tone and the artistry of restraint, since the number can drown in its own applause if the singer cannot steer the room. Deeper pleasures lie elsewhere. The court sequence allows Baldwin to develop a character arc inside a vaudeville act, the kind of nested performance she excels at. The jailhouse transitions give Newell chances to play silences as strategy. Even the exit music may feel different, the audience buzzing with the knowledge that they watched a revival renew itself in front of them.
The road ahead
For Chicago, there is no endgame, only the next hand. Cast turnovers are less upheavals than maintenance. If the past is any indicator, the production will continue to mix screen names, recording artists, and Broadway regulars in combinations that keep Times Square curious. What distinguishes this particular set of arrivals is that both performers are not just names, they are practitioners. Baldwin’s technique is a study in musical narrative. Newell’s voice is a force of nature honed into craft. Together they give a venerable revival something money usually buys only briefly, inevitability.
Broadway has a habit of measuring success by newness alone, a habit that can overlook the satisfaction of craft well tended. Chicago is proof that craft, cared for over time, becomes its own novelty. The orchestra hits, the chorus pivots, the lights slice the stage into clean geometry, and a new Roxie and a new Mama step into a story that knows how to make room for them. The audience stands, and the show returns to its first principles, that the oldest vaudeville trick still works. Give them talent. Give them rhythm. Give them a reason to come back.
If you go
The Ambassador Theatre sits just west of the Broadway crunch, a comfortable walk from most Midtown hotels. Performances are scheduled throughout the week with weekend matinees that can make a perfect hinge for a museum-to-dinner day in the city. The orchestra seats put you inside the bandstand’s glow, the mezzanine offers a clean sightline to the choreography’s geometry, and the back rows, where the snare still snaps and the brass still bites, can feel like the best bargain in the neighborhood. Arrive early enough to take in the onstage musicians assembling, a quiet ritual that doubles as a thesis statement. In Chicago, the music is not behind the action. It is the action.
Come November, audiences will hear a Roxie who turns confession into show business without apology, and a Mama who understands that running a jail and running a theater share one rule, that power belongs to whoever knows how to manage the room. That is not a new lesson for Broadway. It is simply the one most worth relearning. With Kate Baldwin and Alex Newell soon to be in the building, the learning should be loud, clear, and, if the company’s grin is any indication, pure fun.
