Chicago has remained consistently popular in Korea. I went in as soon as ticket sales opened, but almost all the good seats were already gone. It was even harder because my younger son wanted a particular cast combination. I kept checking the ticket site until a pair of seats finally appeared, and we managed to get seats in the third-floor balcony.

The production follows the concert-style staging of the 1996 Broadway revival. The band is fully exposed at center stage, with almost no realistic scenery or major set changes. The actors sit on chairs along both sides of the stage and step into the center when needed. The band, lighting, and the performers’ bodies create most of the stage picture. From the third-floor balcony, the production felt even more minimal, but I could see the overall choreography and stage structure clearly. The sound from my seat was also very good.

Jeong Sun Ah’s Velma handled the choreography precisely and sang with the right weight and bite for jazz. Jeong has a natural flair in the way she sings, often making a song sound glamorous, and that worked well for Velma’s fading sophistication. There was also a satisfying roughness when she pushed into a thicker tone, and the way she used her body suited the role.

I especially liked “I Can’t Do It Alone.” The Velma I later saw on Broadway, Sophie Carmen-Jones, felt like a seasoned woman quietly proposing a deal and working out a scheme. Jeong Sun Ah’s Velma was a little more openly calculating and much more desperate when Roxie threatened to take her place. She began by trying to persuade Roxie with relative ease, but the singing and dancing gradually became more intense. By the end, she almost looked like someone who desperately needed Roxie’s approval.

The Korean translation was simple and accurate. Phrases such as “걔가, 다음은 나, 같이, 혼자선 할 수 없어 (she did, then me, together, I can’t do it alone)” preserved the basic meaning, but they still sounded quite different from “Then she'd, Then I'd, Then we'd, But I can't do it alone.” The difference seemed to come less from meaning than from losing the short, repetitive rhythm of the English original.

Ivy’s Roxie captured both sides of the character well. Her voice sounded gentle and likable, so at first she could genuinely seem innocent. But after the shooting, she pretended to be helpless while pushing the blame onto her husband. In prison, she tried to charm Mama Morton and Velma like an innocent young girl, then changed her attitude, vocal tone, and body language almost instantly when the situation shifted.

The Roxie I later saw on Broadway initially looked like an ordinary girl next door who gradually discovered how to use her own appeal. Ivy’s Roxie seemed to understand from the beginning that innocence itself could be used as a weapon. She was not stupid. She knew how to look stupid. In “I Can’t Do It Alone,” she was also very funny watching Velma desperately try to impress her while responding with boredom and casual rudeness.

Choi Jae-rim’s Billy Flynn also looked like a role made for him. His attitude felt as natural as his singing, and his cold gaze and blunt way of talking about money suited the character. From his first entrance, he sang with easy charm while looking like a lawyer who knew exactly what he was selling.

His ventriloquism in “We Both Reached for the Gun” was particularly impressive. I watched his lips carefully through opera glasses, but could barely see them move. What was even more entertaining, though, was Roxie. While Billy controlled her, Ivy made her whole body look like a puppet. Whenever Roxie was briefly released and returned to herself, her face and movements immediately became naive again. The coordination between the two actors was excellent.

The Billy I later saw on Broadway also sang with very little visible mouth movement, but I do not think literal ventriloquism is the main point of the scene. What matters is that Billy creates Roxie’s words and makes her look like a puppet under his control. Choi Jae-rim was simply so good at the technique that the effect became even stronger.

Mary Sunshine was slightly difficult to understand because of the sustained high falsetto, but the singing itself was stable. The character is already a joke about how different reality can be from appearance, so the later reveal still worked well.

Amos looked deeply pitiful. In a musical where people survive by packaging and selling themselves, he is the only person who does not know how to sell himself at all. “Mister Cellophane” felt more sad than funny. The Amos I later saw on Broadway combined cuteness and humor with that sadness, while the Korean performance emphasized more strongly how abandoned and ignored he was. The number received a great deal of applause in both productions.

What disappointed me most in the Korean production was the ensemble and the dancing. The timing and lines were precise, and the group choreography was cleanly organized. But in Chicago, the individuality of the ensemble performers seems more important than it is in many other musicals.

In a typical musical, ensemble members often leave the stage at the end of a scene and return later in different roles. Chicago works differently. Most of the performers remain seated on chairs along the sides of the stage in black costumes and move into the center when needed. The same people repeatedly scatter and regroup in front of the audience as prisoners, victims, jurors, reporters, and other supporting characters.

In this kind of staging, being able to recognize individual ensemble members becomes part of the fun. In the Korean production, however, the overall silhouettes and movement styles of the performers felt relatively similar. In “Cell Block Tango,” the women were also dressed in similar black styles, so once they scattered across the stage, it became difficult to tell immediately which performer had played which prisoner. As a group, they looked clean and well organized, but I noticed the ensemble before I noticed six distinct women.

The Broadway production I later saw felt very different in this respect. The women in “Cell Block Tango” differed in hair color and style, body type, facial expression, and the way they used their bodies. Even when they were spread across the stage, I could quickly tell who was Liz, who was Hunyak, and who was June. Although they wore the same general black palette and danced within the same choreographic style, they looked less like six dancers and more like six completely different women.

I noticed the same difference among the male ensemble. On Broadway, I had noticed one performer earlier because I thought he was an especially good dancer. Later, he appeared as one of the jurors. Watching that same man become completely charmed by Roxie and vote to acquit her made me laugh. I could also recognize performers who had appeared as victims or in other small roles when they returned later. The fact that the same actors kept becoming different people added another layer of comedy and theatricality.

The Korean ensemble felt more homogeneous. I do not mean that the actors literally looked alike. Within the shared black palette and similar overall silhouettes, the unity of the group was simply more noticeable than the individuality of each performer. That kind of visual unity can work well in ordinary group choreography, but in Chicago, where the same performers remain visible and repeatedly move between different roles, stronger individual identities make the staging more entertaining.

I also felt a difference in the dancing itself. The Korean production was very crisp and technically precise. But in Chicago, precision alone does not seem to be enough. Even within the same Fosse-style angles of the hands, shoulders, and hips, the show gains its particular decadent and sticky quality when each performer carries a slightly different rhythm and physical weight. On Broadway, the choreographic shapes were precise, but the texture of the movement differed from performer to performer. The Korean production had cleaner lines and tighter timing, but less of that individual texture.

So while “Cell Block Tango” had enough power and precision, it was not quite what I had expected from the number. I realized that I wanted less of six people moving perfectly together and more of six different personalities colliding within the same music. The finale also landed with enough force, and I was satisfied with the major performers’ vocals and characterization.

Of course, there is a limit to how directly I can compare the two productions. On Broadway I sat in the very front center of the orchestra, while in Korea I was in the third-floor balcony. From a closer seat, Jeong Sun Ah probably would have looked even bolder, Ivy even more eccentric, and Choi Jae-rim even more sly.

Still, the way the ensemble scattered and regrouped, and the overall choreography, were actually easier to see from the third floor. So I do not think the difficulty of distinguishing individual ensemble members, or the overall texture of the dancing, can be explained entirely by the difference in seating.

Chicago survives without large scenery because it depends on performers, band, and lighting. That makes the individuality and physical presence of each performer even more important. The Korean production had strong principal performances, especially from Jeong Sun Ah, Ivy, and Choi Jae-rim, and the overall production was technically secure. It is easy to understand why the show continues to be popular in Korea, with so many familiar songs and strong principal roles.

Still, if the ensemble had also registered as a collection of memorable individuals rather than primarily as a unified group, the decadent and playful world of Chicago would have felt much richer on this very simple stage.