An investigation is being conducted by Actors’ Equity, which hired a lawyer to review the death and said it would share the results with the cast. The producers hired their own lawyer to investigate, but then decided to “rethink the process,” according to a spokesman, after that lawyer complained about a lack of cooperation from the cast, some of whom were suspicious about whether the show’s inquiry would be objective.

Anger has been directed at the producers and directors, but whether that is fair is a difficult question. Broadway, the mountaintop of theater, is by nature a demanding place. Tough rehearsals happen all the time.

And Mr. Loeffelholz, at 57, was dealing with the kind of career and life pains every actor goes through — indeed, the pains that many everyday workers go through. He was not getting any younger, and his character, a small but demanding role, was not getting any older. He and his partner had also lost control of a chocolate shop they ran in Rockefeller Center and were fighting with the owners.

But no one — not his friends, not his partner, not his bosses, and not his colleagues — seemed to know the depths of his despair until he was found, near death, in his apartment.

Dream Role for an Unusual Talent

“Chicago,” a musical satire about a group of murderous women seeking to parlay their notoriety into careers in vaudeville, is among the best-known shows Broadway has produced; a 2002 film adaptation was the rare musical to win an Academy Award for best picture. The current Broadway revival — the original ran for two years in the 1970s — opened in 1996, and has been performed more than 9,000 times, grossing $625 million thus far; the show is also running in London, and has had multiple tours. Only “The Phantom of the Opera,” which opened in New York in 1988, has been on Broadway longer.