Broadway may be getting down and dirty as never before, with Chicago and other Bob Fosse tributes, but George C Wolfe and Michael John LaChiusa’s musical adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 20s epic poem may be some of the raunchiest fare yet on the Great White Way. From the first sullen exchanges between Toni Collette’s Queenie and Burrs, her angry clown boyfriend played by Mandy Patinkin, it’s clear that the party which will transpire later that night will end in tears, and worse. An ensemble cast that includes the magnificent Eartha Kitt takes the audience through a rollicking jazz-driven orgy of lust, ambition, treachery and violence. Bracing stuff.
