Springer offers neither razzle nor dazzle in 'Chicago'

Type-casting? Jerry Springer, the Sheik of Sleaze, who was a lawyer before he turned TV shlockjock, stars in this touring production of Chicago - now at the Academy of Music - as a lawyer who exploits desperate tabloid types to make a fortune. Who better to star in this great musical, stuffed with clever, catchy songs? Well, somebody who can sing or dance or act might be nice.

Roxie (Bianca Marroquin) and Velma (sleek, leggy Terra C. MacLeod) are thinner and sexier but no less desperate than the people on The Jerry Springer Show. Both are murderers ("He had it coming" as the lyrics to "Cell Block Tango" sing it) and rival clients of the smarmy media manipulator Billy Flynn, who can get anybody acquitted.

The plot introduces us to a slew of women who all killed their men. Their prison is run by Matron Mama Morton (Carol Woods who performs in an irony-free zone, thereby making the character into a gospel singer with a little Satchmo thrown in). Roxie's schlemiel of a husband, Amos (Tom Riis Farrell) gets to sing "Mister Cellophane," a song that should be heartbreaking but here is just a fat man's pitiful joke.

The male chorus is a squadron of muscled pelvis-thrusters. Everybody wears skimpy-skimpy black (this was originally shocking, before such clothes became streetwear). The Fosse-inspired choreography by Ann Reinking is still terrific, all jazz hands and slouches, with hats worn low and cigarettes worn dangling.

Marroquin and MacLeod are both good in the lead roles, but though they knock themselves out, the entire production feels lifeless. Whatever that undefinable something is - edge? electricity? - it's missing here, as is all too often the case with a touring show that's been a big, glitzy hit in London or New York. It's like a photocopy of a photocopy - you can still read it, but it gets paler with each iteration.

Chicago was based on a true sensational event (1924); it became a play (1926), and then a movie (1928) and then another movie (1942) and then this musical (1996), which has been revived constantly since. This version, starring Springer, opened in London earlier this year.

Kander and Ebb's musical offers one nifty song after another: "All that Jazz" is, of course, the signature number, while the hilarious "Class" laments in the most vulgar terms the loss of class in today's world, and the frantic "Nowadays" gives us bitter disappointment, all the while insisting, "Isn't it great?"

But the show-stopper is "Razzle Dazzle," a sinuous, essence-of-show-biz song performed by the entire company and featuring Billy Flynn. Springer performs this with so little energy, and at such a weary tempo, that despite the cheesy sparkles dropped from above and the even cheesier lights splashed on the ceiling, there is neither razzle nor dazzle.