- In the night, water drips from a sink.
- Roxie transforms the dripping, guards' footsteps, and the tapping of fingernails into a song: the "Cell Block Tango."
- The Six Merry Murderesses of the Cook County Jail sing about how they got there.
- Pop. Six. Squish. Unh-unh. Cicero. Lipschitz.
- Pop: This woman killed her man, Bernie, because he popped his gum one too many times.
- Six: This woman found out her man wasn't single. He had six wives, So she poisoned him.
- Squish: Her man accused her of having an affair with the milkman, and then "He ran into my knife ten times."
- Unh-unh: This woman only speaks Hungarian. We don't understand a word she says. When Roxie asks if she did it, she says, "Unh-unh. Not guilty!"
- Cicero: This is Velma's story. At the Hotel Cicero, she walked in on her husband and her sister doing the "spread eagle." Velma swears she blacked out and didn't remember a thing. She didn't know they were dead until she saw the blood on her hands.
- Lipschitz: She killed her cheating artist boyfriend, Al Lipschitz.
- "They had it coming! […] If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it, I bet you you would have done the same!"