Just over five years after it closed in the West End following a 15-year run, Chicago is back. It’s not a new revival, but the return of what has become the definitive production, which originated in 1996 in New York with choreography “in the style of” original original 1975 director the late Bob Fosse. All those characteristics you know – and you almost certainly do know them, because it’s the longest-running musical revival ever on Broadway – are still present and correct. And yet, somehow, both style and content feel a little less this time around.

I don’t think this is a case of familiarity breeding contempt... at least, not familiarity with the tale of murderess Roxie Hart and smoothie lawyer Billy Flynn cynically gaming the 1920s justice system. Rather, it’s familiarity with a world in which such overt, shameless and even self-congratulatory manipulations now seem commonplace. In a recent interview, composer John Kander (who wrote the show with his longtime lyricist Fred Ebb, with Fosse collaborating on the book) observed that recent political developments mean “it feels brand new again”, but in the event it feels not topical so much as unexceptional.

Our contemporary sexual-moral climate – this paradoxical combination of openness and Puritanism – has also taken its toll on the charge of the Fosse-style softcore-fetishistic dance and clothing. Have the costumes not been toned down just a wee bit? In the opening number Sarah Soetaert as Roxie sings “I’m gonna rouge my knees and roll my stockings down”, but only one of the chorus is wearing stockings and those, bizarrely, are over an additional pair of tights.

Soetaert’s Roxie is often ditsy, disarming when she ought to be seductive; Josefina Gabrielle is also less than full-throttle as her cell-block rival Velma Kelly. Ruthie Henshall is coolly commanding as boss-prisoner Mama Morton, as well she ought to be, given that her experience with the show goes back to playing Roxie in ’97. Cuba Gooding Jr, who had barely won his Oscar when this revival first opened, is affable rather than oily as Billy Flynn; moreover, unless his natural voice is unusually husky, it sounded even by the final preview matinee in imminent danger of giving out.

Even on the première of this revival, the implicit question was “What does this show say about our world?”; today, it’s “What does it say about our world when this show feels safe?”

Written for the Financial Times.