Sometimes you just have to hand it to the mainstream. Chicago is a riot as a big glossy movie (although I can’t vouch for the West End production starring some bloke from Eastenders). Kander and Ebb’s songs are a sassy splash of satire, much more scathing and cynical than you might’ve inferred. Queen Latifah edges in among the Tinseltown divas, and numbers like “Razzle Dazzle” and “We Both Reached For The Gun” rasp with wit and pizzazz. Punctuating the swagger is John C Reilly’s rendition of “Mr Cellophane”, a song so cleverly despairing it could’ve been adapted from the works of Philip Larkin. Alarmingly good.
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