Chicago - The Musical

Jimmy Osmond

Emma Barton 

I must have seen the film version of Chicago hundreds of times, loving the superb talents of Catherine Zeta-Jones (Velma Kelly) and Renée Zellweger (Roxie Hart) in a film filled with love, life, death and humour. I was therefore excited to find out about the showing of the stage musical at De Montfort Hall in May of this year and managed to get last minute tickets for the penultimate night of the production. It wasn’t until arriving at the hall that I discovered that Jimmy Osmond would be playing Billy Flynn and Emma Barton (Honey from Eastenders) would be playing Roxie, an added bonus!

Chicago, set in the 1920s, is the story of wannabe stage star and murderess, Roxie Hart and her attempts to be released from prison for the death of her man-on-the-side, Fred Casely. When Casely tells Roxie that his claims to have connections with theatres were untrue, she kills him in her flat and tells the police he was a burglar. However, it is soon clear that she is the real killer and she is sent to the Cook County Jail where she meets her idol and double-murderess Velma Kelly and the lawyer whose reputation is impeccable, Billy Flynn. Roxie’s faithful husband, Amos pays Flynn $5000 in order to help his wife out of jail, which leads to fame for Roxie even from her cell block. Roxie pulls many stunts in order to keep the attention on her, including a claim that she is pregnant. When Roxie is finally released, she is instantly forgotten when yet another man has been killed. Nevertheless, she joins forces with Velma Kelly who helps her reach the stage as ‘a scintillating sinner’.

I didn’t expect the same energy and action from the stage as in the film, but I wasn’t at all disappointed with the performance on such a small stage. Instead of ‘messing around’ with scene changes, the whole production was set in front of a small band of drums, piano, guitar, woodwind and brass, who interacted with the musical more than I expected. As I predicted, the dancing wasn’t as ‘fierce’ as it is in the film, particularly in ‘The Cell Block Tango’ which, in the film, is extremely energetic and boisterous. This does not mean, however, that the stage version was any less interesting to watch. In fact, I would say the experience of seeing a musical at the theatre is much better than watching it on the screen.

I was very impressed with the actors in the musical, especially that of Jimmy Osmond who played Billy Flynn. My first impression was that he wasn’t mean enough for this part, but I was surprised as he portrayed the character very well. I very much enjoyed the humour involved with watching Chicago at the theatre and am glad that I saw a different interpretation of such an excellent production. By Zeus