The Musical as Drama

musical Chicagooccurs, while it may from time to time seem to
be Roxie’s apartment or a law court, is really the stage of a
nightclub, the space of the metaphor.
The film cannot use this idea. The film space is fluid and un-
der the control of the camera, which opens new areas of spatial
and narrative conventions but renders the theatre convention
of a metaphorical stage space irrelevant. So the film of Chicago
opens in a “real” nightclub, not a metaphorical one. Velma is
performing in this nightclub at the beginning ( just after she
has murdered her sister and her boyfriend), and Roxie is on
hand as a spectator. Then Roxie and her escort Fred leave the
“real” nightclub and go to her “real” apartment, where before
long Roxie kills Fred. Then the film moves to the “real” prison,
where Roxie’s vivid imagination lets her imagine various
characters performing as thoughthey were in a nightclub. The
nightclub now becomes a product of Roxie’s imagination. This
makes for brilliant film-making, but it is a far cry from the
metaphorical use of the stage in the musical as a space that
stands for the places of the Chicago justice system. Now it is
Roxie’s mind that creates this connection, and she becomes the
controlling point of view for the musical numbers, as though
she and the camera can be one.
Films like Moulin Rouge, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and
Dancer in the Darkall participate in this discovery that musicals
can create effects true to their own medium by violating the on-
location effect and creating spaces of surrealism or hallucina-
tion for numbers to occur in. That is what happens when
Roxie’s imagination visualizes the nightclub numbers while she
is in prison—the “location” becomes a fantasy. The space of the
number is brought into congruence with the film medium,
which is no longer serving as a nifty way of presenting the stage
version.
The stage is for the vulnerability of performance, and it is
only by degeneration from its own aesthetic principles that it
becomes subject to the omniscience of the set design or the
omniscience of the narrator. The Chicagodances in the film are
so closely edited that Renée Zellweger (Roxie) seems to be a
skilled dancer (she isn’t). Lip-synching has long been used to

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