‘Chicago’ Road Show Goes Just Up Road

Nineteen singing, dancing, homicidal characters appear onstage in “Chicago,” the darkly funny tale of the trial of murderous Roxie Hart (another four “swing” performers wait in the wings).

But when this touring show closes in one theater and moves to another, a cast twice that size takes the stage--as the 40-some members of the stage crew begin the flurry of activity required to load seven trucks with sets, costumes, wigs and technical equipment and head for the next theater.

Usually, there are many miles to cover between shows. But, over the Fourth of July weekend, one touring production of “Chicago” made its shortest move--about 15 miles--from downtown’s Ahmanson Theatre, where it closed after Sunday’s matinee, to Century City’s Shubert Theatre, where it opened Tuesday night. The following is a diary of the four days it took to get there.

In this case, truckers did not have to drive all night, and the road crew did not have to jump on a plane for the next stop. And “Chicago” is a comparatively easy transfer, with a simple set and few special effects, virtually a vacation for veterans of such elaborate, highly computerized shows as “Miss Saigon,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “Ragtime.” Stagehand Maggie Haller, who helped move “Sunset” into the Shubert, recalls it took more than two months of advance work to ready the theater for that show’s massive set.

But, the crew points out, any move of a show from one theater to another involves the same basic steps.

Friday, July 2, 8 a.m. Spotting Call (Shubert):

The crew measures and marks an overhead grid for where the set will hang when it arrives. When the road crew has to travel long distances, an “advance” crew handles this. With the short move to the Shubert, it’s easier for the road crew to just do it themselves, says production carpenter Olan Cottrill.

Cottrill oversees the carpenters, electricians, prop people and truck loaders. The seven-member road crew, which also includes company manager Michael Gill, travels with the show, and in each city, members of the local stagehands’ union also are hired on.

Instead of the taut, leggy bodies clad in skintight black that make up the onstage “Chicago” cast, that backstage chorus line called the stage crew wears athletic shoes, T-shirts, jeans or baggy shorts and tool belts. Think “The Full Monty” before they take it all off.

In Los Angeles, the stagehands are mostly male. Production manager Lois Griffing says such is the case in cities with older, more established unions, where women are only starting to break in. You see more women in small towns, or in theaters associated with universities and colleges, she says.

Walking on a grid high above the Shubert Theatre stage probably begins to seem normal after a few years. However, if you’ve never done this before, you learn more about acting than you do about stagecraft as you pretend that balancing on open metal slats 80 feet above ground is, hey, no problem.

Nervous or not, you just gotta do it after watching the Shubert Theatre’s veteran house carpenter, 83-year-old Milt King, scamper like a squirrel over the metal slats that make up the grid. Milt’s dog Foxy, a patient cinnamon mutt who usually follows him everywhere, wisely remains down below.

In fact, it may be safer up here. We are learning new vocabulary: the usually innocuous term “heads” means a hammer or other object is hurtling downward, aimed at the part in your hair.

There are more words to learn, and forget, today, as Cottrill launches into a dizzying flowchart of how the counterweight is connected to the pipe is connected to the cable is connected to the T-bolt is connected to the thigh bone . . . or something. “It helps to think visually,” Cottrill remarks. “Some people only think in two planes.” There are also those of us who prefer just one.

Sunday, July 5, 5 p.m. Load Out (Ahmanson):

As the 2 p.m. matinee goes on, shiny black trucks lettered in red, saying: “Chicago, The Drop-Dead Broadway Musical,” are already poised at the Ahmanson loading dock. At 4:35 p.m., as the show ends, theatergoers trying to get backstage to meet the show’s stars do battle with a crew that is already moving out. Wardrobe supervisor Avery Kent and her assistants will have the show’s flimsy black costumes packed into crates and hampers within an hour and 45 minutes; hair supervisor Wesley Cagle does the same with 23 wigs.

Everything moves. Like most productions, “Chicago” even totes around its own floor--in this case, it’s a springy surface needed for dancing.

Onstage, the set--a multilevel black bandstand that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle--and metal towers that hold lighting equipment and speakers are being dismantled and hustled into trucks. The flooring, which covers electrical cables onstage, is being broken apart, and its soft, synthetic rubberlike covering is being rolled up like so much Saran Wrap. While it looks like mayhem, everything is carefully labeled and packed in order. “There is a system to it,” insists Ahmanson master electrician Terry Callaway.

Show producers Fran and Barry Weissler have two ongoing U.S. company tours of “Chicago”--the other, coincidentally, also opened Tuesday, at the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts. Barry Weissler says it’s almost impossible to break down the costs of each move, but estimates an annual budget of $500,000 for this touring production. Since last December this company has had 239 performances. Counting the Shubert, it’s opened in 16 theaters in 15 cities.

By 10 p.m. or sooner, everything will be gone. “This is better than the show, ain’t it?” cracks a stagehand as he drags a piece of scenery off the stage.

Monday, July 6, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Advance Call (Shubert):

Electrical and sound systems, as well as the “flys”--decorative curtains or anything that hangs onstage--have arrived to be hung on the prepared grid. But this stuff doesn’t arrive from the Ahmanson; it comes in from Sacramento, where the show closed before it opened in L.A. There are two sets of such equipment, which is packed and stored in “jump trucks” when the show moves out of the theater in the previous city. It then leap-frogs ahead of the trucks arriving with sets from the Ahmanson. “It’s cheaper to duplicate than to lose a day moving it,” explains Griffing. “It would be the last truck out, and needs to be the first truck in.”

At the loading dock for the ABC Entertainment Center, which services the Shubert, a movie complex, restaurants and offices, Cottrill makes sure that the usual Monday morning delivery trucks won’t get in his way. He is more than willing to oust a truck carrying paper supplies for the local McDonald’s. “It’s either you stop, or I stop 40 people from working,” he says. “It doesn’t equate.”

Monday, July 6, 3 p.m.-midnight. Load In (Shubert):

Take the video from the Load Out and run it in reverse, as the set grows onstage piece by piece, in almost the same order it was dismantled.

Tuesday, July 7: Completion of Load In; Light Focus; Sound Check (Shubert):

From 8 a.m. to about noon, the crew makes any final fixes and adjustments to the set. And after the lunch break, Griffing, who is responsible for the look of the show onstage, uses herself as a stand-in for the actors who will be onstage tonight as, one by one, each light is focused and each robotic light cue run through. An hour and a half before the 8 p.m. curtain, the hard-focus, or fixed lights, will be tuned.

At 4 p.m., actors arrive for the sound check, trying out various parts of their songs and dialogue onstage. From the actors’ perspective, the lighting remains the same from theater to theater; the main difference for the actor is how the size and shape of the house affects what they hear, Griffing notes. “The only way they can monitor the way they sound is by the ‘slap back,’ or the sound that bounces off the back of the theater,” she says.

For the crew, the show is over before it begins. Stagehand Steve Blatnik says he has no desire to be part of the usual star-studded opening-night audience that will arrive at 8 p.m. at the Shubert. To him, an actor is just another object to work around onstage, or on which to focus a light.

“A lot of the younger people on the crew are stargazing,” he observes. “You gotta knock ‘em in the back of the head and say: ‘Hey! You’ve got cues to do.’ ”

* “Chicago--The Musical,” Shubert Theatre, 2020 Avenue of the Stars, Century City, (800) 447-7400; Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 30.