Razzle Dazzle — 1997 cast recording

Billy Flynn charges a flat fee, has never lost a client, and is entirely open about his method: give them a show. “Razzle Dazzle” is him saying it out loud, to his own client, in the middle of her trial.

It is the moment the satire stops being about 1924. A courtroom run as entertainment, a defendant coached into a sympathetic character, a press pack rewarded for the version that sells — the show has been called prophetic often enough that Kander and Ebb had to keep denying they were predicting anything.

Sung here by James Naughton, who won a Tony for the part in 1997. The performance is deliberately unhurried: Flynn is never in a rush, because he already knows how it ends.