Review: Chicago brings the Razzle Dazzle to Milton Keynes Theatre

I’ve never seen Chicago on stage before and clearly I’ve been missing out.

The musical tells the story of Roxie Hart (Faye Brookes), a housewife and nightclub dancer who murders her lover for wanting to break off their affair. She’s banged while she awaits trial and is desperate to avoid conviction. We see the great lengths she’ll go with the help of her sleezy lawyer to get a jury to believe she acted in self defence.

The show’s opening number ‘All That Jazz’ is a simply wonderful (and, of course, extremely well known) song to kick things off. It features a fantastic solo from rival cellmate Velma Kelly (Djalenga Scott) and simply brilliant synchronised dancing involving a large number of the cast.

The prison is full of female inmates who seem to be competing for notoriety over how they killed their men. This leads to the fun ‘Cell Block Tango’, where six of the prisoners sing about the murders they committed when they were wronged.

The jail is run by Matron "Mama" Morton – enter Brenda Edwards who added her powerful X-Factor voice to the mix with ‘When You’re Good To Mama’ which references her willingness to accept bribes.

For a fee she’ll set the prisoners up with immoral lawyer Billy Flynn (Kevin Clifton) who has the know-how to play the media into creating “celebrity criminals” in an attempt to win sympathy ahead of their pending trials.

Hired by Roxie, he holds a press conference for reporters where ‘We Both Reached For The Gun’ becomes a cleverly-done ventriloquist act of lies, with Billy feeding the lines that Roxie mouths to the assembled hacks.

Previous favourite convict Velma is being overshadowed by Roxie’s growing popularity, which goes through the roof when her fake pregnancy is reported on.

But Djalenga Scott herself is certainly not overshadowed as she has a dominating stage presence and is magnificent throughout as Velma. ‘I know A Girl’ got the second act off to a great start as she bemoaned how Roxie always comes up smelling of roses no matter the obstacle.

But it wasn’t just her performance that shone... every song throughout Chicago received raptuous applause from the audience. Many of the numbers were rousing - with high kicks and cartwheels thrown in for regular good measure - but they were also slow and delicate in moments too.

Joshua Lloyd as the luckless Amos Hart (aka ‘Mr Cellophane’), whose character suffers from low self-esteem, played his role as the gullible husband perfectly – so much so that you had to feel sorry for him when he was one of the few characters denied their own exit music.

And on a final note, what an impact the orchestra had! It wasn’t just the music they delivered flawlessly. They were a huge presence on stage throughout, sat on a raised platform in full view behind where the story is told – even interacting from time to time with the characters. They took up perhaps two thirds of the stage so the actors did well to perform so well in what space remained.

Chicago runs until Saturday, October 19, and I don’t need to jazz this up... you should book your tickets here now.