A Matter of Black and White

I had a day off parenting duties on Saturday so Clare and I went to the theatre to see the new touring production of Chess. Clare had never heard of it (born in the 80s, you see) and the only time I saw it was more than 20 years ago so I didn't remember much of it, other than the action revolves around the World Chess Championships in 1979 and 1980 (racy, I know) and its most famous song is I Know Him So Well.

I have good memories of it the first time round, but having seen it again I'm not entirely sure why. I remember the song One Night in Bangkok at the beginning of the second half, but I'm fairly sure that most of the plot must have passed me by the first time I saw it. It relies on a certain amount of understanding of what conditions in Soviet Russia were like at the time, and at least a passing knowledge of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against Soviet-imposed policies. Which obviously we all had before we arrived.

Actually, the reason this particular rendition of this particular show isn't up there among my all-time favourites is precisely because it required a knowledge of those things, and the reason knowledge was a prerequisite was that the singers were, as ever, largely drowned out by the music and it was extremely difficult to hear what they singing. If it weren't for the fact that the female lead was almost always understandable, I would have blamed the sound desk entirely, but as she was much clearer, my conclusion is that the other actors were simply not enunciating. Which was a real shame, because I'm pretty sure we missed a lot of what was going on, and came away feeling a bit underwhelmed.

This production was choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood of Strictly fame, and this side of the performance was very well done. A lot of the instruments were played on-stage by the supporting cast, which was very unusual and worked really well, but all in all, my impressions were that one of the male leads behaved like a spoilt child, the other was totally flaky and it didn't take much to turn his head, and the female lead, whilst a great singer, was just a bit of a cow. I'm sure if I had been able to hear the words being sung I would have come away with a lot more than that...