Cuba Gooding Jr. Takes His Curtain Call as Chicago's Billy Flynn

Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. recently returned to Broadway in the role of Chicago's smooth-talking lawyer Billy Flynn, and on October 6, the show cheered its new star with a special curtain call celebration. With a limited engagement through November 18, Gooding reprises the role that he originated in the 2018 London production of Chicago, currently playing at the Phoenix Theatre.

Directed by Tony Award winner Walter Bobbie and choreographed by Tony Award winner Ann Reinking, Chicago features a legendary book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb.

Set amid the razzle-dazzle decadence of the 1920s, Chicago is the story of Roxie Hart, a housewife and nightclub dancer who murders her on-the-side lover after he threatens to walk out on her. Desperate to avoid conviction, she dupes the public, the media, and her rival cellmate, Velma Kelly, by hiring Chicago's slickest criminal lawyer to transform her malicious crime into a barrage of sensational headlines, the likes of which might just as easily be ripped from today's tabloids.

Gooding's breakthrough role was as Tre Styles in the feature film Boyz n the Hood (1991), followed by A Few Good Men (1992), before winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Jerry Maguire (1996). In 2016, he portrayed O.J. Simpson in the FX drama series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 2013, he made his Broadway debut alongside Cicely Tyson and Vanessa Williams in the Tony Award-nominated production of The Trip to Bountiful.