Brooke's Roxie just isn't foxy

Two days late but with legs that made up for it, Brooke Shields finally made her West End musical debut last night.

In one of those casting decisions that will either prove to be inspirational or disastrous, she became the 16th actress to star in the long-running production of Chicago as Roxie Hart, the scheming murderess who will do anything to achieve fame and celebrity: which is, perhaps, more than a touch ironic, seeing how Brooke Shields is a woman who has been famous practically all her life.

She took on her first professional engagement at the age of 11 months in a television advertisement for Ivory soap, achieved instant stardom when she played a child prostitute at the age of 12 in the film Pretty Baby, and since then has never really disappeared from the public consciousness.

She was famous for taking her clothes off at the age of 15 in The Blue Lagoon (but keeping everything demurely covered up with her strategically taped long hair); she was famous for being the Calvin Klein jeans girl; and more recently she was famous for being married briefly to Andre Agassi.

But now it is perhaps time to ask some serious questions about Ms Shields. Why is she still famous? Can she sing and dance? And, perhaps most testingly for a woman who will turn 40 at the end of next month, can she do Roxie's famous cartwheel at the end of Chicago?

The omens, it has to be said, were not good. Ms Shields admitted recently that she only had nine days' rehearsal time to learn the whole of Chicago, which she described as "borderline criminal".

Then her first performance was delayed twice, for what the show's producers said were "extended filming commitments in America" but which one newspaper claimed was Ms Shields plugging her book on Oprah.

But all that was put aside when she stepped on to the stage of the Adelphi Theatre last night and looked, well, stunning. She may be nearly twice the age of one recent Roxie - Jennifer Ellison, who was only 21 but still found it all rather tiring - but she did not look it.

The eyebrows were just as fabulous as they have always been, the legs were - how can one put it? - leggy, and fans of Ms Shields would probably go home with their illusions intact.

But does she really cut the mustard as Roxie? Roxie is a cunning little minx, a hardhearted femme fatale who is sassy and sexy and trouble with a capital T.