After two years without much theatre, the glitz and glamour of Chicago at the Sunderland Empire is an escapist tonic.
By the time the opening bars of All That Jazz play out, the cast and crew have managed a clever magic trick: 2,000 people have been transported from a theatre moments from the Wear to Vaudevillian 1920s America - complete with an uncomfortable number of murderesses...
Of course, Chicago is a clever, blackly comic take on prison life for women back then, with the death penalty hanging over inmates who fight for media attention in an attempt to boost their cases. (Comparisons to current affairs could well be made.) But what this production captures is the larger-than-life sense of showbiz so evident in the long-running musical.
