In the US it comes with a parental advisory on posters and playbills: "May contain subject matter unsuitable for children."
The touring production coming to Taipei next week promises to be just as steamy and salacious as the Broadway shows, so those who like their musicals with a spoonful of sugar be warned.
Chicago tells the true story of the 1920s Chicago jazz slayings that captivated America. Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly were jazz singers turned murderesses. Already a star in the clubs of the second city, Kelly was catapulted to national notoriety for killing her sister and lover after catching the two in bed together.
Hart was a wanna-be starlet longing for her big break. When a beau promised to make it happen for her he lied about his entertainment connections to get her in bed. Hart shot him dead. In prison, she met her idol, Kelly, who wanted nothing to do with her. That changed when Hart got the famous attorney Billy Flynn to represent her and Kelly turned green with envy. Kelly promised to take Roxie under her wing and soon Flynn represented them both.
More intriguing than the plot is the story's theme. The way in which Flynn used the press to build his case for the girl's innocence rings as true today as it did for Hart and Kelly.
"It's all a circus," Flynn said of his work, "Its show business!"
But the bigger reason Chicago the musical has captivated audiences and filled theaters is its show-stopping numbers such as All That Jazz and Razzle-Dazzle, as well as the choreography of Bob Fosse, who first brought the story of the jazz slayings to the stage as a musical and whose style countless choreographers have sought to emulate.
The story of how Chicago came to be is as old as the story itself. Only a year after the famous trials of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly shook America, a Chicago journalist who covered the trials penned a satire that played local theaters. That journalist, Maurine Dallas Watkins, took many of her plot points from the actual cases.
It told the story of innocent girls corrupted by booze and jazz. A year later, the play was made into a silent movie also called Chicago, and was remade as Roxie Hart in 1942, with Ginger Rogers starring in the title role.
Eight years after that, choreographer Bob Fosse saw it as an excellent project for a musical theater piece and tried buying the rights to the story from Watkins. In the years since she first penned her play, though, Watkins had a change of heart about her newspaper stories having helped guilty women go free and refused to sell the story to Fosse.
Her heirs had no such qualms and, after her death 20 years later, sold Fosse the rights. Teaming with the creators of Cabaret, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Fosse finally brought Chicago to Broadway in 1975.
Though a success by most standards, the vaudeville-style show was overshadowed by A Chorus Line, which swept the Tony awards for that year. Chicago was packed away and largely forgotten about for another 20 years. A revival of the show which opened in 1996 is still playing Broadway today.
Its success also spawned the 2002 film version starring Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere. It became the most nominated film of the following year's Academy Awards and won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Zeta-Jones.
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