United Kingdom Kander & Ebb’s Chicago the Musical: Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 3.3.2025. (JPr)
Chicago is 50 years old and – as I began my review after seeing it at 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 still recommend the musical highly, especially if you have never seen it before, and certainly in this iteration when Janette Manrara (famous from Strictly Come Dancing) makes an astounding role debut as Roxie Hart. Proving a triple-threat as actor, singer and dancer and Manrara’s performance – remembering how at the Cliffs Pavilion it was her very first on the current tour – was worthy not only of the West End, but Broadway itself. As good as Brooke Shields was when I saw her make a West End stage debut as Roxie at London’s Adelphi Theatre in 2005, and Faye Brookes also was in 2022, they were both eclipsed by Manrara, in my opinion.
As Mark Fisher reminds us in a programme essay, Chicago in the 1920s ‘was run by gangsters, a time that was half-jazz age and half prohibition-era criminality’. Kander and Ebb’s musical is not an expose of the era’s actual decadence, debauchery and organised crime but satirises a corrupt justice system and the cult of the celebrity criminal which arose then. We see chorus girl Roxie – based on the real-life ‘Beautiful Beulah’ Annan – shoot her lover when he threatens to end their affair. Squirming to avoid the death penalty, Roxie hires Chicago’s most devious – and successful – criminal lawyer, Billy Flynn, to help her convince a hapless and over-loyal husband Amos, as well as the all-important news media and, as a result, the public, of her innocence through lurid frontpage headlines. In Cook County Jail she meets Velma Kelly – inspired by Belva Gaertner – who killed her husband and sister when she caught them together, whilst claiming she has no memory of it having blacked out.
Matron ‘Mama’ Morton controls the prison block and takes bribes off the girls to put them in the public eye. Currently she is orchestrating Velma’s acquittal and a potential return to vaudeville where she used to appear with her sister. However, Velma loses the limelight when Roxie comes along, with the immoral pair soon more engaged in self-promotion than the perilousness of their life and death predicament. Both Velma and Roxie eventually come to terms with the fickleness of their ‘murderer-of-the-week’ fame and bond. Much fun is had by all along the way, with real-life peril intruding only once – and very thought-provokingly – as a Hungarian inmate is hung (basically offstage) despite protesting her innocence with the only two English words she seemingly knows, ‘Not guilty’.
Chicago is a timeless tale of lust, adultery, jealousy, murder, duplicity, corruption, greed, exploitation and has survived when a vast number of other musicals have fallen by the wayside over its five decades. Mama Morton begins ‘Class’ – the philosophical second act number with Velma – with the words ‘The whole world’s gone low-brow. Things ain’t what they used to be’. Chicago remains a very classy musical and proves sometimes you just need a small band playing live on the stage – and part of the show themselves – as well as, its rare confluence of a great songwriting team, John Kander and Fred Ebb, with a legendary choreographer, Bob Fosse (who also worked on the book).
Chicago is therefore an example of musicals as they used to be and possibly are not anymore. After their tremendous success in 1966 with Cabaret, it is the simple 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 money at sets and costumes sometimes isn’t necessary for a musical to be successful. But, and it is a big ‘but’, performing it so reverentially for 50 years means that – as a staging – it is in danger of becoming Fosse-ilised. Particularly as Fosse’s choreography is now over-familiar from Strictly Come Dancing; and every related touring dance show you will see from the likes of Anton du Beke, Giovanni Pernice, Janette Manara (herself with husband Aljaž Škorjanec) and so many others.
I first saw Chicago as the 2002 Oscar-winning film, so I was coming back to it for a fourth time and – as I wrote in 2022 – it made me recall happy memories of Shirley MacLaine bringing what was essential her cabaret show to the London Palladium in 1976. Alan Johnson’s choreography for what was essentially a one-woman show was Fosse-esque and for a subsequent CD release (from a later run in New York) Elton John wrote how he was ‘captivated’ by it and how ‘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 every member of the company of the current Chicago the Musical revival – with its routines similarly grounded in vaudeville – made this evening at Cliffs Pavilion equally as memorable as that Palladium performance; Elton John’s words exactly describe how I felt about Manrara’s performance as Roxie.
So, Chicago – it must be admitted – is ‘of its time’ and I doubt anyone would develop a new musical today where nearly everyone is so good-looking, impossibly tall (with one exception!) and many wear William Ivey Long’s tight-fitting, black – frequently sheer and almost non-existent – costumes to heighten the show’s sensuality. The girls particularly look like singers recently attending the BRIT Awards!
Particularly entertaining is the breaking of the fourth wall with musical numbers being introduced and having the band’s conductor – here the exuberant Neil MacDonald – interact with the cast at times during the musical. Before Chicago ends characters ask for their ‘exit music’ and how fitting it is for the marvellous musicians to keep playing on irrepressibly as their audience leave the theatre.
Revivals of Chicago are (in)famous for a revolving door, casting-wise, of its musical theatre veterans and newbies with ‘celebrities’ from music, film and TV appearing often in short runs. Of course, as long as they bring some individuality to their performance their background is irrelevant. Once again there is an extremely talented, dynamic, all-round excellent ensemble led by Manrara’s Roxie who – as suggested earlier – acts, sings and dances up a storm as the tart with a cold heart.
Joshua Lloyd as the badly-treated Amos Hart endures his humiliations stoically and deserves all the sympathy he gets for his deeply affecting ‘Mr Cellophane’ about his perceived invisibility. The choreography (recreated here by Gary Chryst) is in Fosse’s style by his muse Ann Reinking and – as in 2022 – it is Djalenga Scott (Velma) who is the truest as any to Fosse’s signature jazz style with some impressive angular poses, twirls, high kicks and concluding cartwheel. Compared to Roxie, Scott’s Velma is more of a cynical femme fatale and her ‘I Can’t Do It Alone’ as she tries to persuade Roxie to recreate her sister act when both get released – by breathlessly showing what the two had performed – was a tour de force. Another Strictly alumnus Kevin Clifton was Billy Flynn. He was far from the world-weary silver fox this character sometimes can be, and the charismatic Clifton makes him the epitome of the shyster lawyer. He sings pleasantly and ‘All I Care About’ – a Ziegfeld parody number about the lawyer’s love of money – is always a showstopper with the chorus girls wielding their large ostrich feather fans.
Completing the principal cast was Jordan Lee Davies as the obliging tabloid reporter Miss Sunshine. As in 2022 I had remembered absolutely nothing about this character, so the eventual reveal came again as a huge surprise! Suffice to say I then understood better her unusual sounding ‘A Little Bit of Good’. Replacing Brenda Edwards, Victoria Anderson’s Mama Morton was undoubtedly corruptible though you could believe her when she sang ‘I’m the biggest mother hen’ – suggesting another side to her – during ‘When You’re Good to Mama’, the undoubted highlight of Anderson’s performance.
Chicago still has all the ‘Razzle Dazzle’ you could want and if you can do catch it on its tour which continues till August (for information click 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 (in the style 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