2 Grosse Pointers, Lawyers Perform with A (Habeas) Chorus Line

Sara Fischer Hodges keeps a white binder at her home. It's a plain, simple, every day object, but what's inside makes her smile, laugh and sing.

Actually, what's inside entertains hundreds that come each year to see A (Habeas) Chorus Line perform their parodies of politics, current events, celebrities, local bad boys and girls, you name it.

As this group of attorneys and law professionals like to joke, they take no prisoners, except member Mike Leibson, an assistant U.S. attorney.

The binder holds the show that the troupe performs, all the songs written by Justin Klimko, a resident and partner at Detroit law firm, Butzel Long.

The group came together in the early 1990s and Fischer Hodges was hooked. Even with the hours of practice, the trips to perform around and out of the state and hundreds of songs and skits later, she curls up with the binder and smiles and begins to laugh, sending out a happiness that comes to her as she leafs through the pages, reciting pieces of songs from this year's show. 

A (Habeas) Chorus Line performs one public show each year and this year's is the 20th performance. It is Friday, Nov. 11 at 8 p.m. at . It started as the entertainment at an annual judges' dinner.

"It was really fun. We really clicked. People started asking us to do private shows. We were traveling. The next thing we knew, we were doing this big show," she says.

The Berkley show attracts between 350 and 500 each year. This year's show, in recognition of this being the 20th season, will mix new material - for example spoofs of famously unfaithful husbands in "Keep It Zipped"  - with a medley oldies but goodies from past shows such as Les Miserablaws, Oliver Twisted and Peter Panned.

"It really never gets old," she says.

After all this time together and now into three practices a week leading up to show time, the group of nine is tight, "like a little family," said Fischer Hodges, who became a member of the troupe while working as a case manager in U.S. District Court.

She was invited when the group heard about her singing background. She has also been an actress. "We're a dysfunctional little family," she says.

The only dysfunction that comes out on stage is that of a crazy society, where greedy corporate execs fall from grace, where mayors are on the take, where mid-life crises make people do stupid things and where general craziness brings fame.

Subjects like the plummeting housing market (not funny normally) become a source of laughter in "Please Buy My Brick House," a skit set to the tune of the Commodores "Brick House" and "Teenager I Love" takes a comedic jab at Mary Kay Letourneau, the married schoolteacher's affair with her student.

The members of A (Habeas) Chorus Line span metro Detroit and work across the legal field. Besides Fischer Hodges, Klimko and Leibson, who is from Oak Park, there is: Brian Figot, who has his own practice and lives in Oak Park; Joe LaBella, also in private practice, from Berkley; Judy Zorn, self-employed and from Rochester Hills; Angela Williams, deputy general counsel for the Detroit Housing Commission, from Highland Park; Mark Lezotte, an attorney at Hall Render in Troy, from Detroit; and Jim Robb, an associate dean and general counsel for Thomas Cooley Law School, from Birmingham. 

Fischer Hodges calls Klimko, the lyricist who can put to music words from current events, pop culture and other timely topics and make it funny, "brilliant, a genius."

"He can rhyme words, and you're like, 'What, how did you come up with that!' " 

Jim Robb provides all the music: piano, drums, etc. Everyone sings, dances and acts. 

"There's so much talent here," she says. "It's just so much fun."