Chicago

Campbelltown Theatre Group’s Chicago is a skillfully polished brilliant production that cleverly evokes the style of the late ‘90s professional revival. Permeating this show is a lively pace, dark humour, and sassiness (not the negative-meaning “sass”).

For those unfamiliar with the 90s revival, that was the version which went for the sparse stage and with black being the dominant colour for costumes and set, the “much shorter skirts” being the basic style. Angela Cascarino’s costumes and set brilliantly achieve their goal.

The production works hard to emulate the 90s revival and Fosse’s choreography. Fosse’s iconic routines, poses, and steps are all here, and further interest is created when choreographer Brendan Cascarino ventures at times into his own style. A few times the cast drifted into “Look ma! I can Fosse!” but on the whole they kept to the craft. Act 1 saw the cast dance with reticence, as though in awe of the great Fosse God and did not want to offend. Act 2 saw them “get into it” and enjoy their dancing, so that they looked like they were living the moves, not worshipping them.

I think the Cell-Block Tango and Trial Scene are two of the best sequences ever realised on stage.

Warren Logan nails it as shyster lawyer Billy Flynn. His delivery of the two words that sum up what the show is all about – “that’s Chicago” - is layered with so much meaning. This is his first show in NSW since moving here, and I feel Sydney societies will be fighting for him as their leading man.

I saw the understudies/alternates (incorrectly billed as “swings”, which technically they’re not). Sarah Glynn as Velma Kelly was for me one of the jewels in this tiara. Magical to watch, I could not fault her and she was totally in the moment of her character. Similarly, Hayley Cascarino as Roxie Hart had us charmed. Although at times a bit of unevenness crept into her singing, Ms. Cascarino more than made up for it with her coquettish-vixen take and physicality on Roxie. To add to the Cascarino family involvement, Hayley’s sister Jacqui also did a great job as one of the cell-block tango girls.

Sarah’s real-life step daughter Abbey Glynn was Mama Morton. Although she sang the part perfectly, I felt her youth was against her here. Her singing voice, age and mannerisms could not convince me she was some seen-it-all middle-aged prison warden. Ms. Glynn looked more like Baby Face Morton than Mama Morton, and this was exacerbated whenever she had to interact with Velma and Roxie. However, her singing was strong and confident. Faring better was her cousin Chris Glynn as the murder victim Fred Kasely, who was not scared to (often) flex a bare chest and crotch. Carlos Almeida as Amos Hart was simply brilliant, and his rendition of Mr Cellophane was of a textbook standard.

There were some technical aspects that didn’t work for me. Justin Phan creates a brilliant light design, giving us a black-theatre* style murkiness offset with flashes of colour. However, a hazer is always on, and while I appreciate the effort to suggest a smoke-filled speakeasy and create cone effects the fog was at times a bit too effective. Two songs have the rear screen projector showing film clips. These were so attention-grabbing that I totally ignored the cast to watch the movies. Further, these film clips felt unnecessary and came off as efforts to show off a piece of tech. The new band pit space didn’t allow for the consequent increase in volume, so there were times when the band drowned the cast. I stress that this is not the fault of the musicians, M.D. or sound controller.

But the biggest problem I had in this otherwise powerful show was the sexing up, and I don’t mean the choreography: an actor grabs at his crotch; another spreads her legs to flash while men carry her offstage (the costume leaves little to the imagination here); one actress cups and jiggles her breasts midway through her solo; Mary Sunshine is exposed to be a sex pest, stripping to her underwear and running amok in the court room to smooch Roxie and the Jury Foreman.

Whilst I appreciate that what some consider to be sexploitation others consider edgy sophistication, these incidents came across to me – in the context of this production - as unnecessary and juvenile, robbing the show of its potency and impact. The breast cupping came over as creepy. And the thing with Mary Sunshine not only came over as inconsistent (Sunshine just wouldn’t do that) but also took me out of that zone that audiences are in when we are totally caught up in the magic being created on stage.

In fairness to the creatives, these incidents did not come across as though they were planned (except Sunshine running wild), and seemed to be more of the cast ad-libbing it on the night.

However, at least we get to see why there’s a fuss over Fosse.

Peter Novakovich

* I’m not being racist when I say “black theatre”. That’s the proper name for a form of puppetry.