Well, the name on everybody’s lips, at this performance of Chicago, was not Roxie!! You’ve seen the film, you’ve heard the songs and you may even know the dances but you haven’t seen it all until you’ve seen it on stage. Taking the story back to basics, this production is all about the music, the singing and the dancing. We had fantastic seats, front row of the dress circle and the cast sang straight to us. There were just a few chairs on stage besides the impressive band stand and costumes that were varied in style but the colour is always black.
Velma (Terra C. Macleod) opened beautifully with All That Jazz, followed by Ruthie Henshall’s opening number, Funny Hunny. The show was spectacular, which was bizarre for such a minimal production, and ran smoothly until the song ‘Roxie’ in which Ruthie/Roxie sang of every body loving her and worshipping her. The lyrics finished but the bassline repeated once, twice, three times, in fact for about a minute. During this minute, Ruthie was on stage doing all sorts of awkward sexy dance moves. This was followed by a blackout. We were all surprised when a voice came over the tannoy announcing that Terra could not continue as Velma due to her ‘indisposition’ (any ideas about what that means?) and that Vivien Carter (pictured) would take over. The brunette was replaced by a ginger, the awful american accent was replaced by a decent one and the weak singer was replaced by a powerhouse of a voice box. If I hadn’t seen the film, I probably would have lost the plot but as it turns out, it was the best thing that could have happened.
Vivien and Ruthie finished the show flawlessly. The band stole the show at the end with their quirky character and jazzy improvisation! However, this show lead me back to the lifelong question of Why are the understudies/standbys always better than the leads?
Until that question is answered, I’ll just ponder over whatever happened to class!!?
MiniHobo xXx
