Chess The Musical In Concert - TR Drury Lane

That wasn't great and weird not having any of the concert leads

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Samantha Barks and Frances Mayli McCann were both absolutely stunning in this tonight! The people sat next to me, however, would have been better staying home and listening to the cast album - if they weren't singing, they were talking...!

This was heavily pruned and taken at quite a speed.

Loved Samantha Barks & Hadley Fraser - their duets especially were really very good indeed & Anthem was excellent. Fraser is a very good actor too.

Was a bit ‘meh’ about the other leads.

It is always lovely to hear the score played by an orchestra though.

I felt like standing up and screaming “CALM DOWN” to the MD, who clearly had a train to catch. Full thoughts to follow.

I think this is very, very generous.

I thought it was a slightly interesting but very uneven evening.

Like the Coliseum production, this "concert" version decided not to put the music and lyrics centrestage and instead, muddled the evening with overwrought and often silly projections and, in this instance, choreography that was woefully out of place. Were we supposed to be in Merano, Bangkok or Las Vegas? Less would have been a lot more if they just toned down the production elements and allowed the music space to breathe.

The two male leads were both sensational. Both "Anthem" and "Pity The Child" were worth the price of admission alone. But Samantha Barks brought nothing to Florence that we didn't already get from Idina Menzel. I would have killed to see a powerhouse like Rachel Tucker tackle this role. The less I say about the actress who played Svetlana the better, but if you want to see that role conveyed like someone auditioning to be a Disney princess, here is your chance.

The orchestra and choir were sensational though the mix was a bit off and a fair number of lyrics were inaubible - not suprising for a first run of any show but by the final show tonight it will likely be better.

Certainly glad I saw it, but I wish there had been less distraction and more focus on that glorious score.

I definitely concur with this. At times it did feel like the entire audience was just sat awkwardly waiting for the ensemble to get the dance sequence over with.

Finished about 9.55pm last night and that's with starting about 5 minutes late.

I thought Samantha was a significant improvement on Idina who just shouted everything. Joel, Hadley and Samantha were all great, but Frances jarred with me, she was the only one who felt like she was just singing in a concert rather than playing a character.

The choreography was a bit weird, I agree.

Definitely an enjoyable night, and for me Samantha was the standout, I thought she showed real power rather than just being the pretty voice that she used to be known for.

Neither song is in it which is a shame.

Saw the final Tuesday night show, and absolutely loved it, though the book still needs work, and this was a broad brush large scale rousing concert performance that failed to find any hidden intimacies.

It was all about Hadley Fraser and Samantha Barks for me.

The infamous book that not even Trevor Nunn could fix is clarified in this production: it's basically all about two Alphas cuckolding two Betas, or, Romeo and Juliet for Adults, with disenfranchised partners and added cold war.

Although the projections are mostly background for me, the background animation of Fraser's introductory "I want" song, "Where I want to be" was marvellously Hitchcockian and very effective: with hypnotic black and white Chess spirals and Fraser's character walking the walls and ceiling, and then Vertigo-like plunging into a sinking abyss, as Fraser's powerful voice and mournful ambiguity ruled everything!

Barks, in her innocent white but macho alpha American suit, was almost equally powerful, in her "I want" song, "Nobody's Side," yin which she does in fact switch sides, and dons a dark overcoat to prove it!

And then these two Alphas come together in Benny and Bjorn's most Dolly Parton - Kenny Rogers type duet, "Mountain Duet," which had a Hitchcockian starlit backdrop, with the wondrous Mountain obstacle in the middle, and a shooting star as Fraser triumphantly declared his love and betrayal of his home country all at once.

The cuck songs, "Pity the Child" and "Someone Else's Story" were adequate, but couldn't match the passion of Fraser and Barks, though Joel Harper-Jackson was almost as effective in his high pitched misery of "Pity the Child" as Fraser and Barks were in their full throated throws of glory in "Mountain Duet."

Fraser confirmed himself Alpha man of the match, with "Anthem."

It almost didn't matter that Ako Mitchell wasn't in full voice. Great Alpha love needs no arbiter.

If the theme of the first half was the Triumph of the Alphas, the theme of the second half was Revenge of the Betas.

Joel Harper-Jackson really raised his game, in the second half, becoming electrically impish as Freddie Trumper, gleefully relishing his needling of Fraser's Anatoly with his high-pitched rock trill in "One Night in Bangkok," and even more so in "The Interview," Fraser playing off this beautifully, looking increasingly irritated, as if Harper-Jackson's mosquito was successfully bleeding him dry.

I loved "I Know Him so well," which started with the more dominant alpha-female, Samantha Barks's Florence on the raised stairs at the upper left with Frances Mayli McCann's beta female seated in a chair, submissive and central. But as McCann's Svetlana begins to get to Florence, needling her in a mirror image of the way Freddie needled Anatoly, Barks descended the stairs to the ground level, reduced, and Mayli McCann stood up, raised up, and the two women faced off as equals in a beautiful duet (this was Mayli McCann at her best, providing a worthy foil for Barks).

There was a very retro-Bondian kind of feel to the conclusion of the song, with the two women competing at the lowest most submissive level of the stage for the affections of the great master alpha male, Anatoly, complete with retro Bondian flashlight lighting effects lol.

During the final Chess match, the plaintive music coupled with Fraser's Anatoly's resigned yet dominant attitude, conjured all the nostalgic retro pleasure of a Hamlet cigar commercial lol.

Despite the machinations of the weak book, when Barks reprised "Anthem," she raised her character up again to the stature of Anatoly, and although he was departing, she sang as though their love was timeless and would last forever, absolutely reminiscent of Elaine Paige back in the day.

Although the book still needs work, and this concert lacked the clarity and intimacy of the Union Theatre version, and although I preferred the gaudy wackiness of the Bangkok at the Coliseum, as far as the two central characters were concerned, they were the biggest and the best and the most transporting of the versions I've seen.

4 and a half stars from me.

I really enjoyed this evening...well,most of it.
Thought the first few songs were a bit ropey, particularly where the Arbiter was involved. Ako wasn't great,I struggled to make out a lot of the lyrics. In fact I thought even Marti Pellow's performance at RAH was better. However I enjoyed it from the first Chess game onwards (though that was spoiled by the totally unnecessary choreography going on around them)
As has been already said it was worth the ticket just to hear Hadley's Anthem but Samantha's reprise was equally as good. Frances was ok, but she grinned through most of her songs. I thought the placement of Someone Else's Story was strange, it seem randomly dropped it, we hadn't really been introduced to Anatoly's wife then suddenly she's there singing. I don't think I've seen a version where it appears that early.
All in all glad I came down to see this, it was really worth it to hear it with the choir and orchestra.