Cell Block Tango

Description

• "Pop:" The first woman, Liz, killed her husband Bernie out of annoyance for his bubble gum popping habit, which led her to end the nuisance: "I took a gun and fired two warning shots— into his head."
• "Six:" The second, Annie Young, moves in with a member of the Young family from Salt Lake City before recognizing that Ezekiel is a Mormon polygamist. He had six other wives and thus she poisoned him with arsenic in his drink.
• "Squish:" The third woman, June, explains that her husband Wilbur had threateningly accused her of having an affair with the milkman while she was cooking dinner and that when he charged her, she stabbed him to death: "He ran into my knife. Ten times."
• "Uh-uh:" The fourth woman, Katalin, insists she had no involvement in the crime she is accused of committing, in stark contrast to the others. Speaking very little English, her story is instead told in Hungarian and translates:

  What am I doing here? They say my famous lover held down my husband while I chopped off his head. But it's not true. I am innocent. I don't know why Uncle Sam says I did it. I tried to explain at the police station but they didn't understand me.

  Other than Velma, she is the only member of the sextet to reappear later in the musical; she eventually is falsely convicted and hanged, setting up Roxie Hart's climactic trial.
• "Cicero:" The fifth woman is Velma Kelly, one of the stars of the musical. Her story is that she had caught her husband Charlie doing a provocative acrobatics maneuver with her sister and vaudeville partner Veronica while they were performing in the suburb of Cicero, Illinois. To maintain plausible deniability, she claims to have amnesia about what happens next, but she came to her senses with blood on her hands—strongly implying she killed them both.
• "Lipschitz:" The sixth and final woman, Mona Lipschitz, killed her husband Alvin after she found out he was cheating on her with several women and at least one man.

Covers and external usage