Chicago – Wolverhampton Grand
“Chicago” can hardly be described as bursting with colour with a limited design palette of black, white, grey and occasional splatters of bloody red light during the murders it aims to emulate, perhaps, the movies of the period. More accurately it emulates the still photographs of the newspapers of the period and chooses to present it all in a stilted and, oddly, uninvolving fashion. As the production adopts a distancing alienating technique (I’m guessing more a directorial decision than an authorial one) it deliberately stops us from engaging and empathising with the characters or plot - so all that is left to beguile us is technique and design.
The band dominate the stage sitting like a jazz orchestra trapped in a roll-top desk leaving just a sliver of fore stage for the remainder of...
