Anybody who’s already been around at least since 1996 would know about one of the most (or arguably THE most) popular girl singing groups to ever perform, the British quintet Spice Girls. Be it the catchy danceable songs, or the intense and singular personalities and character gimmicks of the five members that earned them memorable nicknames of their own. While their heyday lasted only four years, the memories and the songs have remained strong, with even plans from three of the girls to reunite for some limited engagements in the future. One of them, Mel “Scary Spice” Brown, even got to perform Broadway, the latest being a role on the long-running musical “Chicago” as one of the main characters.
On her final night performing, Mel B brought her two worlds together to the delight of the audience by briefly breaking character and channeling her Spice Girl persona.
Sneaking ‘Wannabe’ into ‘Chicago’
Shortly after her time as a judge on “America’s Got Talent”, Mel B was announced as having joined the production of “Chicago”, that sensational musical from 1975 set in 1920’s Chicago that satirizes vaudeville and the concept of the celebrity criminal, and was adapted into a 2002 musical film starring Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger, that won Best Picture as itself on the Academy Awards. This particular run that Scary Spice was part of would go for eight weeks – December 28 to February 19 – at the Ambassador Theatre.
She played Roxie Hart, one of the two main character murderesses (Zellweger from the film). As things go, the run was a great success. And on the final performance night last Sunday, in the middle of a scene, Mel B-as-Roxie punctuated her part in the musical when she followed a line from her script with an impromptu rendition of her old group’s signature hit song “Wannabe”, going “So here’s the story from A to Z…” much to the surprise and enthusiastic response of the evening crowd.
'Legendary' moment
"Here is a snippet of me last night doing my last show In @chicagomusical playing Roxie heart breaking character busting out some spice power haha #nyc #broadwaybaby," wrote Mel B on a caption to a video capture of that epic moment on Instagram posted Monday February 20. It was followed by another post that’s plainly a throwback to her days with fellow Spice Girls with a pic of them at the MTV Europe Music Awards, this one captioned “"Me walking off broadway last night at my last show," picking up on her breaking character.
She also tweeted on her final performance, this time with a more in-character photo of her alongside co-star Amra Faye-Wright, who played Velma Kelly.
Boom @ChicagoMusical all done and I didn't cancel 1 show pic.twitter.com/IjWDYvEzD0
— Melanie Brown (@OfficialMelB) February 20, 2017
Whenever Mel B, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell-Horner are going to get that Spice Girls reunion going (Mel C and Victoria Beckham seem to have opted out), they’ll still have their fans waiting for sure.
