Chess

To add a positive voice - my review which I blogged today and will be adding to after visit two at the weekend:

I love Chess. It’s the concept album I’ve played the most, and I think it has one of the strongest scores in musical theatre.

With music by Bjorn and Benny from ABBA, and lyrics from Tim Rice, it started life in 1984 as a recording, before progressing to the West End stage in 1986. It ran for four years before going on tour within the UK, and there was also a Broadway production and others, including one in Sweden, which is available on DVD. A concert version played at the Royal Albert Hall in 2008, also recorded for DVD, and a high camp tour ran in 2010.

Now the musical returns to London for the first time in nearly thirty years, and in this staging relies heavily on the structure of the original concept album, with the addition of Someone Else’s Story from the Broadway production, The Soviet Machine from the London production, and He is a Man, He is a Child from the Swedish production.

There was a bit of off-stage drama before rehearsals got going for the new production, with original London cast member Murray Head, cast as The Arbiter at the age of 72, having to leave for personal reasons. I admit he was a major draw for me when booking, so I was a little sad to hear of his withdrawal, but if you want to see him at the height of his powers, you can find the promo videos of Pity the Child and One Night in Bangkok and the Swedish TV broadcast of the truncated Chess in Concert online.

The story of Chess is both simple (a game of chess between an American and a Russian, West vs East, freedom vs oppression) and complex (the American’s partner and second, Florence, a Hungarian by birth, has a father who disappeared during Soviet occupation; the Russian has a wife, Svetlana, and child back home but walks away from them for the love of the game and asylum in England).

At the time of the concept and first production, the Iron Curtain was still a reality, and the ‘Red menace’ was still a very real threat to the freedoms of the West. The West, represented by the brash USA, was seen as materialistic and superficial, while the East was viewed as repressive, inflexible, and unemotional. When Chess was first conceived, it was a reflection of its times, mixing camp and overblown numbers with political commentary. It was also a hit album, with at least two huge chart hits (I Know Him So Well and One Night in Bangkok).

This production casts widely – the Russian (Anatoly) is played by musical veteran Michael Ball, a tad too old for the part but on good form in both acting and singing terms, sporting glasses and an unruffled expression, even when falling in love with Florence. She is played by Cassidy Janson – we saw her in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical where she impressed with her high octane energy and vulnerablity, qualities which serve her well as Florence, who moves from one chess-playing lover to another and ends up believing “stories like ours / have happy endings”.

The American (Freddie) is Mike and the Mechanics lead singer Tim Howar. I wasn’t familiar with him but he puts across the obnoxious front of the man who is a hurt little child inside, and he has a powerful set of pipes which stop the show with Pity the Child (I understand that earlier performances had issues with pacing due to extended applause for this number, but on the performance last Saturday afternoon the lights cut to black directly afterwards, curtailing any audience appreciation).

Svetlana, not usually a major role, is played by pop singer Alexandra Burke, who has a belt of a voice but limited acting skills. At the age of 29 she is far too young for her 55-year-old Anatoly, and her drab – but accurate – Soviet costumes have attracted comment from those who probably seek to see her in sparkles. Aside from one brief scene at the beginning, she does not appear until the end of Act One, when her character is given the song of Someone Else’s Story, which makes much more sense for Florence.

There are several chorus numbers – the opener is The Story of Chess, led by The Arbiter (now played by Cedric Neal, who gives yet another dimension to the complex yet underused role), followed by the tongue in cheek cavorting of Merano. There are video projections throughout the production, but aside from showing a plane arrival during this number, and a sequence of slick merchandising product during the American cheerleading number, they are mainly utilised to show blow-up film of what is going on before us on stage.

I enjoyed the British Embassy number, which is hopelessly dated, but very funny, and the acrobats, strippers, and pole dancers of Bangkok, with fire, masks, and that cheesy rap. The orchestra and ensemble singers and dancers do a fabulous job throughout, required to change focus, nationality, and style as the musical progresses. Everything about this show is huge in scale – everything, that is, except the chess board, which those with long memories may recall was much larger in those early productions.

This is a big, loud, dynamic show which is about as 80s as you can get. For those of us who grew up with it, it is a little corner of musical theatre heaven. For those of you not sure, go if you can. It’s like Marmite, so you may hate it – or you may not. In any case, I would be surprised if a big production is put on in the West End again.

Chess is on a limited engagement at the ENO Coliseum, and closes on the 2nd June 2018. I am visiting again this weekend, and will update this review after that – I felt that despite the greatness of the show, it cannot be fully appreciated from the poor sightlines of the upper levels, and I look forward to reporting back from a more premium seat at my next visit.

This whole discussion is pretty barmy. “Theatre stops people taking water in. Theatre gives people water.” I honestly don’t understand the need for a hoo-ha.

Water lot of fuss about a drink!

Irrigate?

Well as you've posted in the Chess thread I hope it's Chess.

P.S. Five pounds for the flimsy little programme: daylight robbery!

That’s interesting to read. I’m not sure script changes could save it for me though (unless they were extreme). I think it’s told from the wrong perspective. I would rather it was told from the women’s perspective with little if any focus on the men. Of course the name of the show would have to change too.

I downloaded the RAH concert at the weekend and upon listening to it I would say apart from Josh Groban and Kerry Ellis the voices of the Coliseum cast are far superior. Idina Menzel just screeches through her numbers and you can really hear the difference between that orchestra and the wonderful ENO orchestra.

Idina was appalling. Adam Pascal was good though.

Well I loved it as well and going back for a 2nd go next week.

I’ve seen Chess a couple of days ago. It was the first ever version I saw so I have nothing to compare it with.
But here are the couple of thoughts from someone born in the Soviet Union.

And I’m really afraid to touch that subject, but... If there are so many talks about importancy of correct representation of 2 races in conflict in Wes Side Story, then maybe it’s also important in the story about rivalry between 2 countries? (Making a remark here: I’m personally fine with colourblind casting, but there will be more on that later). There were no dark-coloured people in Soviet Russia. Literally none. Maybe after the Olympics we got some, but not at the time. There were and are Asian Russians, but no African Russians. And especially there couldn’t be anyone dark-coloured in the KGB. (Even if we forget about plain soviet woman), and this is essential to KGB organisation as it is.
I’m totally fine with ensemble appearing as italians, soviets, brits, americans and thai people and don’t see any problem with that, you can’t have 5x amount of people to appear on stage depending on the place the story goes. But leads?
Why not make them look as authentic as it could be? Michael Ball looked the part with his rather “soviet engineer” figure. But even if we close the eyes on Alexandra’s skin colour, she was too glamorous for a soviet woman. Have you seen a famous photo of Nina Khruschev near Jackie Kennedy? Svetlana is supposed to look more like Nina but we got glamorous Jackie wearing long red nails (in Soviet Russia?? While doing all the things at home? I laughed my socks off) and the hairdo and dresses that look completely out of the world. Why put so many efforts and make the ensemble wear wigs and everything if Ms Burke appears prety much as she was in Sister Act?

I loved the Americans though. Both the looks and acting. And of course voices. Tim Howar is very sexy. And Cassidy was simply the best.

Another problem I had was rather one-way describing of the cold war. When they had the game with newspaper headlines appearing, the headlines were only American. Constantly repeating frases like “dangerous Russians, scary Russians” etc. Why were there no Soviet headlines translated and used? This could be done easily.

Couldn’t understand half of of the words they were saying in Russian. Not as bad as it was in Stephen Ward, but there’s smth to learn from Matildas down the road.

Overall it was nice seeing the show, but I was not as moved as I wanted to be