United Kingdom Kander & Ebb’s Chicago the Musical: Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 3.3.2025. (JPr)
Chicago is 50 years previous and – as I started my overview after seeing it on the Cliffs Pavilion in 2022 – ‘there is little new I can add to the praise it has garnered on Broadway or in countless productions throughout the world’. I can nonetheless advocate the musical extremely, particularly when you have by no means seen it earlier than, and definitely on this iteration when Janette Manrara (well-known from Strictly Come Dancing) makes an astounding position debut as Roxie Hart. Proving a triple-threat as actor, singer and dancer and Manrara’s efficiency – remembering how on the Cliffs Pavilion it was her very first on the present tour – was worthy not solely of the West End, however Broadway itself. As good as Brooke Shields was after I noticed her make a West End stage debut as Roxie at London’s Adelphi Theatre in 2005, and Faye Brookes additionally was in 2022, they had been each eclipsed by Manrara, in my view.
As Mark Fisher reminds us in a programme essay, Chicago within the Nineteen Twenties ‘was run by gangsters, a time that was half-jazz age and half prohibition-era criminality’. Kander and Ebb’s musical just isn’t an expose of the period’s precise decadence, debauchery and organised crime however satirises a corrupt justice system and the cult of the movie star prison which arose then. We see refrain lady Roxie – primarily based on the real-life ‘Beautiful Beulah’ Annan – shoot her lover when he threatens to finish their affair. Squirming to keep away from the demise penalty, Roxie hires Chicago’s most devious – and profitable – prison lawyer, Billy Flynn, to assist her persuade a hapless and over-loyal husband Amos, in addition to the all-important information media and, in consequence, the general public, of her innocence via lurid frontpage headlines. In Cook County Jail she meets Velma Kelly – impressed by Belva Gaertner – who killed her husband and sister when she caught them collectively, while claiming she has no reminiscence of it having blacked out.
Matron ‘Mama’ Morton controls the jail block and takes bribes off the ladies to place them within the public eye. Currently she is orchestrating Velma’s acquittal and a possible return to vaudeville the place she used to look along with her sister. However, Velma loses the limelight when Roxie comes alongside, with the immoral pair quickly extra engaged in self-promotion than the perilousness of their life and demise predicament. Both Velma and Roxie ultimately come to phrases with the fickleness of their ‘murderer-of-the-week’ fame and bond. Much enjoyable is had by all alongside the way in which, with real-life peril intruding solely as soon as – and really thought-provokingly – as a Hungarian inmate is hung (mainly offstage) regardless of protesting her innocence with the one two English phrases she seemingly is aware of, ‘Not guilty’.
Chicago is a timeless story of lust, adultery, jealousy, homicide, duplicity, corruption, greed, exploitation and has survived when an unlimited variety of different musicals have fallen by the wayside over its 5 a long time. Mama Morton begins ‘Class’ – the philosophical second act quantity with Velma – with the phrases ‘The whole world’s gone low-brow. Things ain’t what they was once’. Chicago stays a very elegant musical and proves typically you simply want a small band enjoying stay on the stage – and a part of the present themselves – in addition to, its uncommon confluence of a terrific songwriting workforce, John Kander and Fred Ebb, with a legendary choreographer, Bob Fosse (who additionally labored on the e book).
Chicago is subsequently an instance of musicals as they used to be and presumably usually are not anymore. After their great success in 1966 with Cabaret, it’s the easy cabaret setting of Kander and Ebb’s jazz-age follow-up musical – which originated with director Walter Bobbie’s 1996 Broadway revival – that proves how throwing cash at units and costumes typically isn’t essential for a musical to achieve success. But, and it’s a huge ‘but’, performing it so reverentially for 50 years implies that – as a staging – it’s at risk of changing into Fosse-ilised. Particularly as Fosse’s choreography is now over-familiar from Strictly Come Dancing; and each associated touring dance present you will notice from the likes of Anton du Beke, Giovanni Pernici, Janette Manara (herself with husband Aljaž Škorjanec) and so many others.
I first noticed Chicago because the 2002 Oscar-winning movie, so I used to be coming again to it for a fourth time and – as I wrote in 2022 – it made me recall pleased recollections of Shirley MacLaine bringing what was important her cabaret present to the London Palladium in 1976. Alan Johnson’s choreography for what was basically a one-woman present was Fosse-esque and for a subsequent CD launch (from a later run in New York) Elton John wrote how he was ‘captivated’ by it and the way ‘Every facet of her act was superb — singing, comedy, dancing and most of all warmth and complete mastery of her audience. The lady is quite simply a lesson in professionalism for any other performer.’ Although each member of the corporate of the present Chicago the Musical revival – with its routines equally grounded in vaudeville – made this night at Cliffs Pavilion equally as memorable as that Palladium efficiency; Elton John’s phrases precisely describe how I felt about Manrara’s efficiency as Roxie.
So, Chicago – it have to be admitted – is ‘of its time’ and I doubt anybody would develop a brand new musical as we speak the place practically everyone seems to be so handsome, impossibly tall (with one exception!) and lots of put on William Ivey Long’s tight-fitting, black – incessantly sheer and nearly non-existent – costumes to intensify the present’s sensuality. The women notably appear to be singers just lately attending the BRIT Awards!
Particularly entertaining is the breaking of the fourth wall with musical numbers being launched and having the band’s conductor – right here the exuberant Neil MacDonald – work together with the solid at instances through the musical. Before Chicago ends characters ask for his or her ‘exit music’ and the way becoming it’s for the marvellous musicians to maintain enjoying on irrepressibly as their viewers go away the theatre.
Revivals of Chicago are (in)well-known for a revolving door, casting-wise, of its musical theatre veterans and newbies with ‘celebrities’ from music, movie and TV showing usually briefly runs. Of course, so long as they convey some individuality to their efficiency their background is irrelevant. Once once more there may be a particularly gifted, dynamic, all-round wonderful ensemble led by Manrara’s Roxie who – as advised earlier – acts, sings and dances up a storm because the tart with a chilly coronary heart.
Joshua Lloyd because the badly-treated Amos Hart endures his humiliations stoically and deserves all of the sympathy he will get for his deeply affecting ‘Mr Cellophane’ about his perceived invisibility. The choreography (recreated right here by Gary Chryst) is in Fosse’s fashion by his muse Ann Reinking and – as in 2022 – it’s Djalenga Scott (Velma) who’s the truest as any to Fosse’s signature jazz fashion with some spectacular angular poses, twirls, excessive kicks and concluding cartwheel. Compared to Roxie, Scott’s Velma is extra of a cynical femme fatale and her ‘I Can’t Do It Alone’ as she tries to influence Roxie to recreate her sister act when each get launched – by breathlessly exhibiting what the 2 had carried out – was a tour de drive. Another Strictly alumnus Kevin Clifton was Billy Flynn. He was removed from the world-weary silver fox this character typically may be, and the charismatic Clifton makes him the epitome of the shyster lawyer. He sings pleasantly and ‘All I Care About’ – a Ziegfeld parody quantity concerning the lawyer’s love of cash – is all the time a showstopper with the refrain women wielding their massive ostrich feather followers.
Completing the principal solid was Jordan Lee Davies because the obliging tabloid reporter Miss Sunshine. As in 2022 I had remembered completely nothing about this character, so the eventual reveal got here once more as an enormous shock! Suffice to say I then understood higher her uncommon sounding ‘A Little Bit of Good’. Replacing Brenda Edwards, Victoria Anderson’s Mama Morton was undoubtedly corruptible although you would imagine her when she sang ‘I’m the largest mom hen’ – suggesting one other facet to her – throughout ‘When You’re Good to Mama’, the undoubted spotlight of Anderson’s efficiency.
Chicago nonetheless has all of the ‘Razzle Dazzle’ you would need and if you are able to do catch it on its tour which continues until August (for info click on right here).
Jim Pritchard
Featured Image: Janette Manrara (Roxie Hart) © Matt Crockett
Cast:
Janette Manrara – Roxie Hart
Djalenga Scott – Velma Kelly
Victoria Anderson – Matron ‘Mama’ Morton
Kevin Clifton – Billy Flynn
Joshua Lloyd – Amos Hart
Jordan Lee Davies – Mary Sunshine
Ensemble: Bethany Adamson, Josh Crowther, Joe Dale, Jessica Keable, Robin Kent, Annabelle Laing, Jacob McLay, Jonathan Milton, George Olney, Ellie Shaw (Assistant Dance Captain), Lucy Anne Stacey, Matthew Sweet, Ria Tanaka
Swing: Oliver Ramsdale (Dance Captain)
Creatives:
Music, Book & Lyrics – John Kander and Fred Ebb
Co-Author – Bob Fosse
Original New York Director – Walter Bobbie
Original New York Choreographer – Ann Reinking (within the fashion of Bob Fosse)
Set design – John Lee Beatty
Costume design – William Ivey Long
Lighting design – Ken Billington
Recreation of Original Direction – Tânia Nardini
Recreation of Original Choreography – Gary Chryst
Recreation of Original Sound design – Matt Grounds
Script Adaptation – David Thompson
Orchestrations – Ralph Burns
Music Director – Rob Fisher
UK Tour Music Supervisor – Adrian Kirk
UK Tour Music Director – Neil MacDonald