THE current production of Chicago is proof that you should never underestimate a soap star.
There are four of them leading the cast at the Liverpool Empire this week – Ali Bastian (Hollyoaks) as foxy Roxie Hart who shoots her lover and tries to get her docile husband to take the blame, Tupele Dorgu (Coronation Street) as the alluring double murderess Velma Kelly, Brookside’s Bernie Nolan as prison Matron “Mamma” Morton and Stefan Booth (Hollyoaks again) as manipulative lawyer Billy Flynn.
Based on a play by Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, who was assigned to cover the 1924 trials of murderesses Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, the musical is presented as a cabaret show, with characters performing different numbers to move the plot along.
It’s a musical for grown-ups – sophisticated, slick and caustically witty, with a cracking musical score and characters more likely to poison your popcorn than sing you sweet ballads of love.
With little set and few props – although the live band plays on the stage – the pressure is absolutely on the performances and in such a vigorous show there’s no room for even a second’s lacklustre.
Bastian and Dorgan prove themselves to be fine comic actors in the ilk of Doris Day – if nastier and egocentric. Roxie’s first meeting with the Chicago press pack in the song We Both Reached for the Gun was brilliantly done, Bastian slipping easily between mute ventriloquist’s dummy to spoilt wannabe showgirl.
That this is her first ever stage musical makes her performance more impressive, but Dorgan’s Velma threatens her leading lady status in real life as well as in the story.
Sharp and sexy with a voice made for belting show tunes and legs up to her ears, the former Corrie star puts in a magnetic performance that’s hard to forget.
Meanwhile, Booth, with his Rat Pack-style voice, makes a cheesily charismatic Flynn, and Nolan lives up to her pop star pedigree.
Laura Davis
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