Chess

Why does Florence not appear until well into the story? In versions I’ve seen previously, you don’t have to wait that long for her character to appear. Why, according to some people who have seen it so far, is her appearance so much later in this production? What has changed to that extent?

New member here. I've been following this thread since the show got the green light but I too refused to buy a ticket until I knew who was involved. Michael Ball was a fine pull for me and feels like an old pal I've known since Aspects of Love a hundred years ago and my first West End show.

I had the album way back when in '85 and was lucky enough to see it on Broadway with the amazing Judy Kuhn - saw it twice in one trip on its all too brief run. It's a show very dear to me.

And overall I was happy with this production. The plot is still a mess and yet another ending tagged on. I think that's the third variation I've seen including a US tour with a father/daughter reunion for Florence at the very end.

I enjoyed all four leads and I personally loved the screens and the choreography was wonderful. The Soviet/USA number was fab. The music sounded superb but it was a case of wondering what music would be used and what songs wouldn't.

I was there Saturday night and there were many empty seats around me in the upper circle. I wondered if the fine weather had caused that? Cedric came in too early on a line and had to sing it again and with those big screens you could see the terror in his eyes at the mistake and then a huge nervous smile. The audience were very kind though and gave him a very strong response and many whoop whoops.

I would see it again but it's just not running long enough for a trip in from the SW.

On a side note, my bag got checked and I had to argue not to have my bakery goods in my bag get confiscated. I had to promise the woman that I would not be eating cinnamon buns through the performance!

That's me described to a tee! Top of the Pops seemed SO important, I kept a chart of the charts, awash with predictions of how high each song would go. And I thought ONIB should go to number 1 cos it was original (rapping - wow) and "mysterious:" all the inadvertently racist orientalism of the time, casting everything to do with Asia as temptation, drugs and/or sex,  with Bowie's "China Girl" in the charts the year before, "White China" the lead song on Ultravox's new "Lament" album," Alphaville singing "Big in Japan" and ONIB, maybe, best of all, with it's queens, devils and angels all ready and willing to swallow rational Westerner, Murray Head from head to toe. I didn't know the song was from a musical at the time, but even then it was obvious this was a character Murray Head was playing, in a story he was telling, as he was so nasty about Thailand, and I thought he was deservedly consumed by Thailand's temptations at the end of the song, as all the queens, angels and devils got the better of him. I'm glad I didn't really get it lol.

Sadly, the musical itself utterly fails to create a frame for this great sounding song that would turn it into effective theatre. If only Freddie Trumper was effectively characterised, the song could be presented as his insular, Apocalypse-Now style mad reactionary rant about everything outside his comfort zone, a song that indicts both him and the arrogant culture this pampered preening rock star of a Chess player derives from. Instead, the song comes across as the exact Eurovision-style culturally-insensitive cheesy tourism that the song should be critiquing. To it's credit, this production gives lots of good parts to BAME actors, and does not demean them by relegating them to the ensemble cheesefest that illustrates this song. And I did enjoy Tim Howar's eighties preening very much, his wavy wobbling hair, his furious petty manchild pouting, with his careening onscreen image suggesting a lead singer of a rock band at the end of a very long cocaine binge after a gig. The highlight of the whole show, for me, was Howar's massive indulgent whine about how much we should "Pity [his inner] Child," in which he tries to justify his aversion to "queens" by confessing his daddy called him a "queer." Howar delivered it with admirable straightfaced passion and conviction. As theatre, it's beyond ridiculous. As cheese, it's a year-long highlight, of much-needed ridiculousness, at a stressful historical moment. I loved it!

In fact, cheese was where the fun was at with this production, given the absence of a book. I can't critique the book, because there simply wasn't one.

However, Cassidy Janson's hair looked every bit Bonnie-Tyler-after-a-bout-with-a-wind-machine, and I checked the year column on my watch when she was on stage to see if it was 1984. Janson nailed "I know him so well," as did Alexandra Burke, but the cheesy irony of the song is that we don't know Anatoly one bit, and we kinda sorta know that she doesn't either. We know NOTHING about him, except his nonsensical pronouncement in "Anthem" that he loves his home, but not it's history, nor his family either, evidently, since he has abandoned them for a bit of adulterous debauchery. It is to Michael Ball's hilarious wonderful credit that he keeps such a straight face as he makes so much out of that song. The women next to me were having conniptions of delight at the force of his belt (his voice, not his waistline), but it was his straight face that I truly appreciated. The best cheese should never be openly acknowledged.

The sense of cod opera was in the air throughout. A classic opera has a soprano in the doldrums: here, Alexandra Burke, effectively channeling emotions from nowhere; and it has a baritone with dastardly destructive intentions: here, Phillip Browne's growling impressively fearsome Molokov, and it has supernumeraries up the wazoo, who sing at them from the sidelines (I loved the laughing policemen style number that the male ensemble performed, in particular), while two tenors fight over a lady (present and correct, sir). But instead of the deep dark desperate emotions that an opera would elicit from these ingredients, here, there is abject hollowness: and huge screens projecting that hollowness out into the audience, so we can check every nook and cranny of the stage for a real emotion, only to find not a one, and then realise how hilariously funny it is to sing about emotions that simply don't exist, because they were never written.

This show is the reverse image of last year's ENO musical. There, Boe blundered through the most elementally moving musical of all time, Carousel, overegging his physical prancing to disguise his lack of inner feelings. Here, his songmate Ball freezes every narcissistic impulse to conjure genuine emotions from his soul, but applies them to an empty frame of a musical, that simply has forgotten to join the dots of characterisation and story to all it's wonderful performers.

In the lead up to this show, we had so much praise here for the show, and so little regard for the performers. But it's the performers, not the show, that won me over this time.

I rate it the same as last year, for opposite reasons: 3 and a half stars.

The water thing is nothing more than a mild inconvenience. There were huge pitchers of water at the bar when I went last Saturday that you could help yourself to.

If loads of people were sneaking alcohol in and being rowdy the venue would be criticised too. They can't win!

The visuals were interesting - what a great idea to make a musical look just like watching a film of people singing. But watching 2 giant Balls towering over one mini one, is just too distracting, and made me wander if it was an attempt to make mini Ball more imposing, and why the show wasn't priced 90% lower. They also tried to use historical images to convey the setting but, as the wise American lady next to me noted, the images are probably lost on most people under 50. It was also annoying to be left watching people move invisible pieces on a, sideways viewed, chess board, for what seemed like an age, while two actors went through a limited repertoire of meaningless expressions, but said side screens showed nothing of the top view of pieces on chess board -which might have woken up the odd brain cell.

The sound mixing was off in multiple places. The addition of an operatic chorus, on top of the MT ensemble singing the score, just produced a countervailing operatic caterwauling , when it didn't just support the main vocals. The orchestra was sensational , but, in overkill, killed everything else. If you have a thin book we need to hear what there is of it. The power also didn't always match the score - the opening dirge , attempting to display the sheer turgid, drabness, of state socialism in practice, isn't improved by being played by a louder orchestra.

Cassidy Janson was very good - although the American lady noted that Florence isn't meant to be the most powerful singer there, but she was glad someone stood out. The ensemble were also good. Though the book imposes unmeetable demands on the male ensemble- to play physically opposite roles - from the, infamous, un PC, ladyboys, TO acrobats, to the, sturdy , anti-freeze sozzled , thugs of the MVD, the KGB praetorian guard .

The main problem though was a plague of miscasting among the leads. It looked like the search for a quota of star names was reinforced, by some crazy idea to introduce diverse lead casting - all regardless of who could play the role . The result was I didn't think either chess master was convincing. One wasn't notably Russian, troubled or brilliant, or that vocally spectacular, and the other was a somewhat tepid, unconvincing, supposedly rock star, character who could also have been better served by the sound mixer. The Arbiter wasn't authoritative, or always audible, or comprehensible, and the Russian KGB minder lacked menace, authority and much else . The tension declined further when his MVD unit looked more camp than gulag. Alexandra Burke was a story of two halves and an inbetween. Someone Else's Story mined areas of her range best left unexplored , but I Know Him So Well was nice.

If you want to put on a story with missing dots , undermining any attempt to join them up, and to sing difficult , lyric heavy songs, you need to pick people who can act them to fill in the gaps, and who can sing the right notes powerfully enough . In this case it wouldn't have been difficult to think of several casts of leads who should have been stronger- I saw two top females in a cabaret that evening, who were free, for singing Svetlana. Or they could have lifted Svetlana and the Arbiter from their own Sunset Boulevard cast's Betty and Max , Or just raided their own ensemble , and then looked at an army of better male leads from the resting ranks of acting enabled Phantoms, and Galileos.

As it was I would have preferred this on 2 15 foot screens


As people have also noted, it started on a bad note when the sheer greed police decided to make sure their profits were not threatened - by refusing admittance to any food or drink. While you have all transport organizations advising people to take drink with them on a scorching day - the ENO security staff busied themselves clamping down on the deadly threat to profits. An intelligent terrorist could easily get in and kill hundreds, but that deadly bottle of water was being efficiently kept out. I took the appropriate action, and decided not to buy anything at all inside. Perhaps they will get the point if enough people did the same.

I spent a while this morning watching the promo videos and concert from 1984 with the concept album leads. Always forget how moving it is when Elaine Paige as Florence and Tommy Korberg as The Russian sing together.

"It’s central to our ethos that everyone who comes through our doors feels completely welcome" - so that's why we'll be nabbing any bottles of water off you at the entrance and offering you an overpriced alternative from the bar instead.

Well, I still think this is a dumb policy but it's now in line with some other theatres and at least not just singling out one audience.

And yet free water is available in all the bars, some with ice, lemons and.limes in. They'll even give you a free plastic glass to take into the auditorium.

To be fair the people telling us to tip out our water were telling everyone where they could get water from.

Don’t rain on my tirade.