Chicago

Published Tuesday 1 June 2004 at 09:15 by Mark Shenton

Now into the seventh year of its revival run, Chicago is still razzle-dazzling audiences as the smartest, sassiest and most sizzling musical in town. Though it has had a new lease of life from the Oscar-winning success of the film version, this lean, stark production has a powerful theatricality that narrates its story of American-style justice with a propulsive energy.

That is partly thanks to the galvanising choreography of Ann Reinking - staged in explicit tribute to one the show’s original creators, Bob Fosse - but Kander and Ebb’s witty, pungent songs have a thrilling delight all of their own that superbly advance its stories of two women murderers turning their crimes into the stuff of celebrity in late-twenties Chicago.

These two roles have become a rites-of-passage for many West End leading ladies, from Ruthie Henshall and Maria Friedman to Linzi Hateley and Denise Van Outen, Right now there is a superbly contrasting pairing of the pint-sized, full-voiced Frances Ruffelle as Roxie Hart in juxtaposition with tall, angular star in the making Tiffany Graves, who has graduated from the chorus and understudying Roxie to take over the role of Velma Kelly. She is the sexiest actress I have seen in the role since Leigh Zimmerman.

There is also currently terrific work from Alex Bourne as the amoral lawyer Billy Flynn, and Zee Asha as prison matron Mama Morton. But around them this is above all a show for a sexy ensemble to strut their stuff and you will not see a six-pack firmer than Sergio Priftis has or a woman more striking than Vanessa Leagh-Hicks, who has been with the show since it opened.