It Takes Class To Razzle Dazzle Nowadays! (Chicago)

Name: karenuk

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Product:	Chicago
Date:	19/04/05 (852 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: excellent show, great dancing, impressive

Disadvantages: expensive

Last night, for my middle daughter’s birthday treat, three of us (my daughters aged 14 and 12 and I) went to the Bristol Hippodrome to see Chicago on stage. We are all fans of the film and play the CD quite a lot, so we were already familiar with the story and the music, but seeing a musical on stage is always a special experience.

THE STORY (for those that don’t know it)

Velma Kelly is a successful theatrical performer. Roxie Hart isn’t, but would love to be. While hubby Amos is away, Roxie has an affair with Fred Casely. He threatens to leave her, so she shoots him. She ends up in jail for murder and could face the death penalty.

Meanwhile, Velma finds her sister in bed with her lover and also ends up in jail on suspicion of murder. But with the help of super-lawyer Billy Flynn, both girls might be able to be found not guilty and freed.

But, of course, Chicago is much more than a story. With murder, sex, lying and deceit in there, things can only become explosive!

THE FILM VS THE STAGE PRODUCTION

First of all, those accustomed to the film version will have to accept a few changes. We were all initially surprised to see that, in the stage production, Velma was blonde instead of brunette and Roxie was brunette instead of blonde. Just when we got that straight, we had to cope with Mama Morton being white and Billy Flynn being black!

There are more musical numbers in the stage production than in the film. Owners of the DVD will be familiar with Class, which is an extra, as it was cut out of the movie. But there are several others we didn’t know. Still, more of this kind of thing is rarely bad and we were happy to hear the new ones almost as much as the old, well-loved songs.

Previous stars of the stage version of Chicago have included Marti Pellow, John ‘Nasty Nick’ Altman, Jennifer Ellison, Jill Halfpenny and Claire Sweeney, so we were wondering who our stars would be. Therefore, I was slightly disappointed to discover I didn’t know any of the cast at all. But a few minutes in, we realised it really doesn’t matter. After all, fully-trained musical theatre performers are probably going to be better (technically) than TV stars that may have only been trained in acting, dance OR singing.

THE STAGING

One of the most striking things you notice about Chicago is the stage setting. For starters, there is a large live band on stage! They are arranged on a kind of tiered area with stairs and a trap door, which is used by the cast to entrance and exit from at times. This makes the band an integral part of the whole show and their involvement and obvious enjoyment really contributed to a great atmosphere. The conductor even got a couple of bits of acting to do!

With the band taking up so much of the stage, the dancers have a relatively small area to work in, but do an excellent job. Fans of Bob Fosse will recognise the jazz style and isolations made popular in his musicals, along with the emphasis on black costumes and these are particularly effective here.

It was good to see the dancers weren’t all your willowy anorexic types. There were curvy women, petite women, short stocky men and tall athletic types. You also got to see quite a lot of their bodies, as the men often wore very tight trousers and see-through tops, while the women looked like something from a lingerie catalogue!

THE CAST

As a whole, the cast were excellent. The standard of acting, singing and dancing was very high, from the lead roles through to the ensemble. The one weak spot, I felt, was Jacqui Rae as Mama Morton, whose voice was slightly thin and her stage presence somewhat lacking in authority. The chemistry between her and Velma was good though.

Velma was my favourite character. Rachel Stanley was perfect in the role with a huge voice and a warmth in her work that radiated throughout the theatre. She really seemed to be living the role and was convincing from her first note, whereas it took me slightly longer to accept Claire Taylor’s Roxie Hart. Both women worked very well together though and their final number of the show was a fitting finale.

Cavin Cornwall is an excellent Billy Flynn, with a wonderful ability to be charming, smarmy, generous or selfish, all at the flash of a smile or touch of the hand. The lawyer is really a showman, an entertainer as much as Velma Kelly is, and he knows the exact way to manipulate the press and public opinion to get the verdicts he wants.

His ‘ventriloquist’s dummy’ routine with Roxie was the highlight of the show for me – such an impressively fast-paced and intricate sequence. I also loved the use of the girl dancers with the big feathers in the Razzle Dazzle number – a real reminder of old Hollywood glamour, while also reminding the audience what a fake Billy really is!

Christopher Howell played the down-trodden and oft-ignored Amos Hart with emotion and his rendition of the sad song Mister Cellophane hit just the right tone. He received one of the biggest cheers of the night.

OVERALL

So, to sum up, Chicago was excellent and all three of us thoroughly enjoyed it. The cast was impressive, the dancers flawless, the costumes breath-taking and the live band superb. It just goes to show you don’t need a big TV star to sell this show; the music and spectacle of Chicago are enough of a draw without that.

My only complaint really was the cost of tickets at £27.50 each. If theatre wants to gain new fans, something really should be done to bring the prices down, so it can become a regular outing, not just a couple of times a year treat.

But was it worth it? No doubt.

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