All that jazz!

Sexy, satirical and spectacular, Chicago shows why it remains one of the most captivating musicals of all time, dazzling audiences

- Keith Bain

There's a familiarity that's part of the package when you sit down to watch Chicago, the musical that is now half a century old, tailored around its potent combination of sassy characters, sultry tunes and sexy dance numbers.

Several of its songs feel like old friends, including the opening number All That Jazz, which not only establishes the mood but, given the slickness with which it's being performed in a new season of the show that's opened in Cape Town, sends expectations skyrocketing for two hours of effervescent entertainment.

A story that revolves around the sordid adventures of a couple of murderers seeking undue attention in Chicago's jazz-fuelled Twenties might sound potentially heavy and harrowing, but the joy of the show is in the clever balancing of the underbelly of its rancorous characters with dark humour and downright steamy song-and-dance routines.

The resulting concoction is a spectacular guilty pleasure, perfectly poised at the intersection of bittersweet and utterly vicious.

It is, after all, a show that simultaneously condemns and makes a meal out of the double standards of the very same America that is right now being torn asunder by a president playing much the same game with the media and the public that the musical's crafty killers engage in.

The creators of Chicago — composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb (the same duo who crafted New York, New York) wrote the songs, while Ebb fleshed out the story alongside celebrated choreographer and director Bob Fosse — understood the fun to be had from preying on the public's lust for tawdry tales about dirty rotten scoundrels.

And they clearly knew enough about the thin line distinguishing good from evil to conjure up a slew of magnificent song-and-dance routines, all of them apparently impervious to the passage of time.