Book excerpt: In 1975, the Broadway musical Chicago brought together a host of memes and myths, the gleefully subversive character of American musical comedy, the reckless glamour of the big-city newspaper, the mad decade of the 1920s, the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. The tale of a young woman who murders her departing lover and then tricks the jury into letting her off, Chicago seemed too blunt and cynical at first. Everyone agreed it was show biz at its best, yet the public still preferred 'A Chorus Line', with its cast of innocents and sentimental feeling. Nevertheless, the 1996 Chicago revival is now the longest-running American musical in history, and the movie version won the Best Picture Oscar. As this text looks back at Chicago's various moving parts, we see how the American theatre serves as a kind of alternative news medium.