Chicago The Musical Tickets - Garrick Theatre

The stage is set in the mid 1920s in Chicago, Illinois, Velma Kelly is a vaudevillian performer who murdered both her sister and her husband when she found them in bed together. Velma welcomes the audience to tonight's show ("All That Jazz"). Meanwhile, we hear of another murder, chorus girl Roxie Hart's lover, nightclub regular Fred Casely.

Roxie manages to convince her husband Amos that the victim was a burglar, and Amos cheerfully takes the blame for the killing. Roxie expresses her appreciation of her husband's thick skull ("Funny Honey"). However, when the police name the deceased man, Amos belatedly puts two and two together and the truth comes out, and Roxie is promptly arrested. She is sent to the women's block in Cook County Jail, which is inhabited by Velma and other murderesses ("Cell Block Tango").

The prison block is presided over by the corrupt Matron "Mama" Morton, whose system of mutual aid ("When You're Good to Mama") perfectly suits her convict clientele. She has helped Velma become the media's top murder-of-the-week and is acting as a booking agent in preperation for Velma's big return to vaudeville.

Velma is not happy to see Roxie, who seems to be stealing not only her limelight but also her lawyer, Billy Flynn. Roxie tries to convince Amos to pay for Flynn to be her lawyer ("A Tap Dance"). Eagerly awaited by his all-girl clientele, Flynn then sings his anthem, complete with a chorus of fan dancers ("All I Care About is Love"). Billy decides to take Roxie's case and re-arranges her story for consumption by Mary Sunshime, a sympathetic tabloid columnist ("A Little Bit of Good").

Roxie's press conference turns into a kind of ventriloquist act with Flynn dictating a new distorted version of the truth ("We Both Reached for the Gun") to the press while Roxie mouths the words.

Roxie then becomes the new toast of Chicago and she proclaims so boastfully while planning for her future career on the stage in vaudeville ("Roxie"). As Roxie's fame grows, Velma's notoriety is all but left in the dust and so in an "act of pure desperation", she attempts to talk Roxie into recreating the sister act ("I Can't Do It Alone"), but Roxie turns her down, only to find her that own headlines have been replaced by the latest sordid crime of passion. Separately, Velma and Roxie realize that there's no one they can count on but themselves ("My Own Best Friend"), and the ever-resourceful Roxie decides that being pregnant in prison would definately put her back on the front page.

Act Two

Velma once again welcomes the audience with the line "Hello, Suckers," another reference to Texas Guinan, who commonly greeted her public with the exact same phrase. She informs the audience of Roxie's continual run of luck ("I Know a Girl") despite Roxie's obvious and many falsehoods ("Me and My Baby").

A little shy on the arithmetic, Amos proudly claims paternity, but still nobody notices him ("Mr. Cellophane"). Velma attempts to show Flynn all the tricks that she's got planned for her trial ("When Velma Takes The Stand"). With her ego growing, Roxie has a heated argument with Flynn, and duely fires him.

She is however brought back down to earth when she learns that a fellow inmate has just been executed.

The trial date finally arrives, and Flynn calms her, telling her if she makes a show of it, she'll be fine ("Razzle Dazzle"), but when he passes all of Velma's ideas on to Roxie, she uses every one of them, down to the rhinestone shoe buckles, much to the dismay of Mama and Velma ("Class").

As promised, Flynn gets Roxie her acquittal but, just as the verdict is given, an even more sensational crime pulls the pack of press bloodhounds away, and it seems that Roxie's fleeting celebrity life is over. Flynn leaves, now done with the case. Amos stays with her, glad for his wife, but she then confesses that she isn't really going to have a baby, making Amos finally leave her.

Left in the dust, Roxie pulls herself up and extols the joys of life ("Nowadays"). She then teams up with Velma in a brand new act, in which they both dance and perform ("Hot Honey Rag") until they are joined by the entire company ("Finale").

Theatre tickets to all performances of Chicago The Musical at the Garrick Theatre in London can be purchased securely through this website.

The Garrick Theatre in London is a west end theatre located in Charing cross Road in the City of Westminster.  It opened on 24 April 1889 with The Profligate which was a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. In its early years, The Garrick appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama, and today the theatre is a receiving house for a variety of productions. The theatre is named after David Garrick who is considered to be the most influential Shakespearian actor.

The Garrick Theatre was financed in 1889 by the playwright W.S. Gilbert, the author of over 75 plays, including the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. It was designed by Walter Emden, with C.J. Phipps who was brought in as a consultant to help with the planning on the difficult site, which included an underground river. Originally the theatre had a capacity of 800 seats on 4 levels, but the gallery (top) level has since been closed and the seatring capacity has been reduced to 656.

A proposed redevelopment of Covent Garden by the GLC in 1968 saw the theatre under threat, together with the nearby vaudeville, Lyceum, Adelphi and Dyuchess Theatres and only an active campaign by Equity, and theatre owners under the auspices of the Save London Theatres Campaign led to the abandonment of the scheme.

The gold leaf auditorium was restored in 1986 by the stage designer Carl Toms, and in 1997 the front façade was renovated. The theatre has mostly been associated with comedies or comedy-dramas.  Sydney Grundy's long-running French-style comedy A Pair Of Spectacles opened here in February, 1890 and Mrs Patrick Campbell starred there five years later in Pinero's The Notorius Mrs Ebbsmith.

The theatre suffered a short period of decline afterwards until it was leased by Arthur Bourchier, whose wife, Violet Vanbrugh starred in a series of successful productions ranging from farce to Shakespeare.  In 1900, the theatre hosted J.M. Barrie's The Wedding Guest and Rutland Barrington presented several stage works at the Garrick, including his popular "fairy play" called Water Babies in 1902, based on Charles Kingsley's book, with music by Alfred Cellier, among others. The only piece actually premiered by W. S. Gilbert here was Harequin And The Fairies.

In 1921, Basil Rathbone played Dr. Lawson in The Edge O Beyond at the Garrick, and the following year Sir Seymour Hicks appeared in his own play, The Man In Dress Clothes.  In 1925 Henry Daniell played there as Jack Race in Cobra and appeared there again as Paul Cortot in marriage By Purchase in March 1932.

More recent productions at the Garrick include No Sex Please We're British which played for four years at the theatre before transferring to the Duchess Theatre in 1986. On 24 October 1995, the multi-award winning production of J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls opened here, having played successful seasons at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton and Olivier theatres as well as the Aldwych and a season in New York on Broadway.

In 1986, the Garrick Theatre was acquired by the Stoll Moss Group, and, in 2000, it became a Really Useful Theatre when the Stoll Moss Theatres Ltd was bought by Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Really Useful Group. In October 2005, Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer purchased the Garrick Theatre, and it became one of five playhouses operating under their company name of Nimax Theatres Ltd, alongside the Apollo Theatre, Lyric Theatre, Vaudeville Theatre and Duchess Theatre.

The interior of the Garrick Theatre retains many of its original features, and was grade II listed by English Heritage in September 1960.

Theatre tickets to all performances at the Garrick theatre can be purchased securely through this website.