In my previous column I promised to write more about the production of Chicago that opens in Johannesburg this week. Readers may wonder why I’m so attached to the show that I would cover it twice.
There are plenty of other musicals that “hit me in the feels” more than Chicago, or that are better suited to my politics and my hopes for the human species. Yet Chicago is the one I’ve seen the most, it’s the one I quote the most and it’s the one whose melodies I most often catch myself humming.
That’s partly attributable to the circumstances under which my wife and I first encountered the 2002 film version of the musical, with its killer cast of “scintillating sinners”, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah and John C Reilly. We were living in Japan at the time, immersed in a culture and language we admired but barely understood. The film’s sexed-up version of the jazzy 1920s seemed familiar by comparison but also made for easy escapism; we watched it many times over.
As a result, the hedonistic and largely amoral spectacle of Chicago — a world in which there are no heroes or villains, only self-preserving opportunists whose charm and charisma are nevertheless utterly endearing — became a strange source of comfort. So when — after we’d moved back to SA — Showtime Management announced a new local staging, it felt like Hazel Feldman had brought the show to the Teatro at Montecasino just for us. A few hundred thousand other people evidently felt the same way.
Chicago had sold-out SA runs in 2005, 2008 and 2019. Watching it each time became like welcoming back an old friend who had been on the road for a few years (which was not inaccurate because these productions travelled around the globe before and after their stints in Joburg and Cape Town). So my wife and I made sure we were in the audience for the 2025 production, which boasts some recognisable names and faces along with leads and ensemble members enjoying their breakout roles.
We’d seen Samantha Peo as the not-so-naive ingénue Roxie Hart in 2008, and then as the jaded vaudeville killer Velma Kelly in 2019. Peo must have performed in Chicago almost 1,000 times. Yet in the new production, for which she reprises the role of Velma, she brings an energy to each performance that confirms she has lost none of her pizazz and passion for the show.
Kiruna-Lind Devar, for her part, rejuvenates Roxie as a quirky, ambitious, self-assured but winsomely vulnerable anti-hero. Tankiso Mamabolo is a strident Mama Morton — though somehow less cynical than others I’ve seen, which is refreshing. Dean de Klerk, who plays Roxie’s dumpy-dopey husband Amos, brings the right combination of comedy and pathos to the role. (Amos singing that he should have been called “Mr Cellophane” is the only sincerely sad moment in Chicago).
And then, of course, there’s Jonathan Roxmouth as “the silver-tongued prince of the courtroom”, defence lawyer Billy Flynn. In the 2002 film, Gere was given a few moments to lend Billy a touch of humanity, but onstage his character is the coldest and cruellest hard-nosed pragmatist of the lot. It takes a certain kind of performance — an unassailable smoothness — to make us love Billy as much as all those who are enthralled by him within the world of Chicago do. Craig Urbani found it when he took on the role some years ago, and Roxmouth gives one the impression he was born with it.
Ultimately, however, what makes Chicago work is the sexy, slick, singing-dancing ensemble. In this production, the choral characters don’t miss a step or a beat; the very smoke from their cigarettes is puffed to perfection. When Chicago hit Broadway 50 years ago, it broke the choreographic mould — not only in terms of seductive moves but also in terms of sheer athleticism — and it still feels new.
Through it all, the orchestra faces the audience and plays on (as any jazz band would have to do in a smoky club of ill repute). Five, six, seven, eight! Get to Chicago between October 3 and November 16.
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