Chicago The Musical at the Ambassador Theatre

Stand on West 49th Street for a moment and listen. Taxis hiss past. A doorman calls out to the line. Above you, the marquee carries a single word in bold red letters, and the black-and-white artwork beside it shows a body in mid-pose, all angles and attitude. This is the Ambassador Theatre, and the show inside has been telling the same wicked story to New York audiences for more than two decades.

The show is Chicago, a musical about murder, celebrity and a public that cannot look away. It is now the longest-running show still playing on Broadway. Only The Phantom of the Opera ran longer, and that show closed in 2023. So when you walk through these doors, you join an audience that has been coming back, night after night, since the late 1990s.

The story begins with real events. In the 1920s, a young reporter named Maurine Dallas Watkins covered murder trials for a Chicago newspaper. Several of the accused were women, and the city followed their cases like a serial drama. Watkins noticed something unsettling. Glamour, a good lawyer and clever headlines seemed to matter more than guilt. She turned what she saw into a stage play called Chicago, which reached Broadway in 1926.

Half a century later, the director and choreographer Bob Fosse saw new life in that cynical tale. He worked with the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, the partners behind Cabaret. Their musical opened in 1975. It framed the story as a vaudeville show — a style of variety theatre with singers, comics and dancers that filled American stages in the early twentieth century. Every song became a performance, as if the courtroom itself were a stage.

That first production did well, but it was not the legend it later became. The version you will see tonight is a revival. It began as a concert staging in New York in 1996, with costumes kept simple and the orchestra in full view. Audiences loved it. The production soon moved to Broadway, won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, and changed theatres a couple of times before settling here at the Ambassador in 2003.

Now look at the building itself. The Ambassador opened in the early 1920s, built by the Shubert brothers, who were among the most powerful theatre owners in the country. The architect was Herbert J. Krapp, who designed many of the playhouses around Times Square. His style here is calm and classical, with cream and gold tones inside and decoration that frames the stage rather than competing with it.

Here is a detail most visitors miss. The plot of land was an awkward shape for a theatre. Krapp solved the problem by setting the auditorium on a diagonal. The seating does not run straight back from the street the way you might expect. Instead, it sits at an angle across the lot. Once you are inside, you may notice that the house feels cosy, almost wrapped around you, partly because of this unusual layout.

The theatre has not always hosted live shows. Across the middle of the twentieth century, like several Broadway houses, it spent stretches away from the stage. At times it showed films, and at times it served broadcasters as a studio. Live theatre returned in later decades. Knowing this, the building feels less like a museum piece and more like a working space that has adapted to every era of the city.

When the lights go down, the design of Chicago becomes clear. There is no grand scenery. The orchestra sits on a tiered bandstand right on stage, framed in gold, and the musicians become part of the show. The cast wears black — sheer fabric, fishnet, sharp hats. The spare look was partly practical when the production began as a concert. Now it is the signature. Your eye goes straight to the bodies and the light.

The dancing is where Fosse's spirit lives on. The choreography for the revival was created by Ann Reinking, a dancer who had worked closely with Fosse, and it is credited as being in his style. Watch for the turned-in knees, the rolled shoulders, the isolated flick of a wrist or a hip. Small movements carry big meaning. Fosse believed a single finger could say as much as a leap across the stage.

You will likely recognise some of the songs, even if you have never seen the show. All That Jazz opens the evening with smoky confidence. Cell Block Tango brings six women forward to explain, with dark humour, why their men deserved what happened. Razzle Dazzle is the lawyer Billy Flynn's lesson in how to win over a jury. And Mister Cellophane gives a quiet, sad moment to the husband nobody notices.

One more surprise. Over its long run, the revival has become famous for its rotating casts. Stars from film, television, music and sport have stepped into the lead roles for limited stretches, often bringing in audiences who rarely go to the theatre. Many long-time fans return to compare performers. It is part of how a show this old stays fresh — and part of why the story about fame feels so close to real life.

Before you go in, or as you leave, take one last look at the street. The red letters glow above the doors. People queue beside posters of performers past and present. The neighbourhood around you is the Theatre District, where dozens of stages sit within a few short blocks. And inside this angled old playhouse, Roxie and Velma are getting ready, once again, to ask for your applause.