Angel Theatre

From the moment the curtain opens at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End, the audience is treated to a glorious spectacle as they are whisked back in time to the 1920s and introduced to the chorus girl Roxie Hart. The famous musical Chicago has been at the West End since 1997 when it originally opened in its current run at the Adelphi Theatre, where it broke the record for the longest running production at the venue, staying for 3,000 performances until 2006.

It was then that the musical found its new home – or should that be old home? The show had originally premiered for the first time back in 1979 at the Cambridge Theatre and in the summer of 2006 it made its triumphant return where it remains to this day.

So the Cambridge Theatre is now the location to witness Roxie Hart as she is thrown behind bars for the murder of her husband and casting her into the kind of spotlight she never desired. She wanted to be a star, not an infamous killer. Inside she meets Velma Kelly, a Vaudevillian performer whose sister had an affair with her husband, so she killed her. During their time on the wrong side of the bars they form a friendship that leads to their bid for freedom, so that they can pursue their goals and become big stars. Along the way they are aided by their lawyer Billy Flynn.

As well as being set in the 1920s, the show was also penned in that decade, emerging as a result of the writing talent of Maurice Dallas Watkins, a Chicago Tribune Columnist. It makes the show over eighty years old and means that the story has captivated many different generations of audiences around the world. It even found its way onto cinema screens when a movie version was released in 2002 starring Richard Gere as Billy Flynn along with Renée Zellweger as Roxie Hart and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly. Watkins could never have predicted such success and neither could Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse who wrote the book and musical lyrics to the hit show.

So make sure you book your cheap theatre tickets for the musical Chicago and you could be part of a story that has stood the test of time through most of the twentieth century.