Eastbourne: Chicago proves "an exultant and dazzling feast" on stage

REVIEW BY Kevin Anderson
CHICAGO. Djalenga Scott 'Velma Kelly' and The Company. Photo Tristram KentonCHICAGO. Djalenga Scott 'Velma Kelly' and The Company. Photo Tristram Kenton
CHICAGO. Djalenga Scott 'Velma Kelly' and The Company. Photo Tristram Kenton

Chicago is back in town – and at the Congress Theatre this week, the original Kander-Ebb-Fosse musical is as great as ever: an exultant and dazzling feast for the eyes and the ears.

The show opens as it means to go on. All That Jazz: focused, sinuous movement from dancers who hunt in a pack. Then Roxie Hart – “nobody walks out on me” – delivers her first number from half-way up a ladder. It beckons you in, this show, and Roxie doesn’t take no for an answer.

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Some musicals convert easily to celluloid; some even look better on screen. Not this one: you have to be there live, immersed as the performers are in the music, the mesmerising dance movement, the raw – if improbable – narrative. Within minutes, Roxie has opened fire and Fred Casely is the earliest corpse in musicals. He had it coming, intones the Cell Block Tango – just one number in a fabulous score filled with driving, compelling music.

If you have never watched Chicago live – or if you had forgotten how good it is, how intoxicating and deliciously wicked - you honestly must rush to its final Congress Theatre performances this week at the Congress Theatre and catch this production.

The company is brimming with explosive talent, both seasoned and younger. For Monday’s opening night the Roxie Hart role was actually taken by the understudy – but you’d never have known it. Billie Hardy, tossing her blonde hair and turning every step and gesture into that essential explosive Roxie-ness, was absolutely excellent. Faye Brookes will have been an equally accomplished lead for the rest of the week.

Opposite the frenzied, impetuous Roxie, Djalenga Scott’s Velma brings a terrific stage presence, with elegance and command. Jamie Baughan turns that understated Amos Hart role into a piece of centre-stage genius with his brilliant Mr Cellophane number. Sheila Ferguson, she of the shimmering Three Degrees, struts and scowls as Mamma Morton.

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So many other cast members deserve a mention, but space doesn’t quite permit – you’ll need to see the show and grab a programme. Suffice that this a genuinely a whole-company show, without a single weak link and with a common cause.

But wait: who on earth is behind the dodgy moustache and slick hair of Billy Flynn? It is Russell Watson in possibly the most surprising piece of casting of the year – and an absolute eye-opener. Soft Northern vowels have turned effortlessly into sandpaper North American. No more Mr Nice Guy… Russell plies his crooked-lawyer trade with such brazen amorality that Songs of Praise will never sound quite the same. A terrific characterisation and, needless to say, a commanding voice.

There is pathos, too, in this tale of a Chicago without moral compass, where crooked lawyers were real and not simply stage caricatures, where scores were settled with a .38 calibre, and where – in that stunning and shocking Rope Trick moment, a young girl (Holly Jane Stephens as naïve and hapless Hunyak) can die on the gallows. The dark is light enough…

Around Billy in his big number, the six principal dancers prowl and pounce like six tigresses. All the dance direction is faithful to the Bob Fosse original; but remember that whatever the show’s awesome heritage, however many famous names have been in it or behind it since 1975, these guys have to re-create it night after night. It’s the joy of live musicals, and also their challenge – and boy, does this vibrant young company rise to it.

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There are some shows you remember for the dancing, others for the big set-piece chorus numbers, others for a particular solo. This Chicago production is the whole package. From the opening All That Jazz to the Hot Honey Rag finale, the unforgettable Kander and Ebb numbers just tumble out. The ten-piece band, tiered above the action, are having a ball of their own – and what a smashing entr’acte, with each musician taking their own little bow!

That was actually a token of the class that infuses this production. Lovely, also, to have every single performer named at the final walk-down – adding to the sense that this was a shared theatrical experience, greedily and enjoyably shared by company and audience alike. One of the Congress Theatre’s great nights – and the final confirmation that we are all back live!

REVIEW BY Kevin Anderson

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