John Kander–Fred Ebb–Bob Fosse
Chicago
Chicago tackles timeless problems, timeless questions. With a certain cynicism, it approaches the show character typical of the musical genre, painting an accurate picture of the fake, hypocritical world of the suddenly popular celebrities and stars that we may be familiar with from the media. It also confronts us with the common experiences of today, how corruption has a society-shaping power, how justice is sometimes a sham, how manipulative the media is in shaping the public consciousness. How today, even the news of murders is only a temporary sensation, because we have become indifferent to death…
Chicago also accurately captures the general phenomenon where form dictates content, where the presentation and context of an event seems more important than the event itself. That in the maze of manifestations by YouTubers, TikTok stars and empty-headed fashion dictators on various other social media platforms, all human values and life itself have become relative, only the scandalous are considered real news, and it is almost impossible to separate quality from utterly worthless content.
It would therefore be hard to find a more topical piece of music to illustrate the current state of the world than Chicago, in which even the most heinous crime can be bought, in which evil does not receive its just punishment, in which life is not a rosy dream. For unlike the happy musical stories with their happy endings, here, behind the familiar melodies, spectacular performances and colourful costumes, we are greeted by the disappointing sobriety of reality.
