A tight and spectacular performance of Chicago as presented by Ben McDonald and director Michael Hurst had the large audience chuckling.
The musical remains alarmingly valid today. These ladies are savvy, lithe and strong; only murderers by necessity.
All the acting is thoroughly professional. The ensemble stayed in character as they moved stage props and swept the stage floor. Their dancing in and around the band, their stunning acrobatics on high while streamers and tinsel flew, were always flawless and spectacularly effortless.
The live band, unsurprisingly, sounded like the real thing.
Lead roles are slick and fast paced with many underhanded comic asides. All have an axe to grind.
Mamma Morton, played by Jackie Clarke, is only too ready to take, make and break. Velma Kelly, played by Lily Bourne, is only too happy to whip opponents into shape. Roxie Hart, played by Nomi Cohen, plays the sweetly frustrated star who will indeed do anything for just one dance in the limelight.
Hunyak, played by Sophie Jackson, who protests her innocence right to the gallows, silences the auditorium as she twitches in death, only to emerge later as the Statue of Liberty.
But "everyone’s a winner baby", fit to reinforce our faith, we are told, in America.
Brilliantly timed in the calendar and brilliantly executed, Chicago, the Musical hits its target, point-blank.
