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Chess is more
Nov. 28th, 2008 12:40 pmChess: the musical
Oxford Playhouse, Thursday 27th November
I wish I'd written at the time about the semi-staged production of Chess that we saw in the summer -- a marvellous birthday present from Owen, who knew that I'd've travelled a long way to see any production of Chess, so a concert performance at the Albert Hall hosted by Tim Rice (and starring Marti Pellow) was the icing on the cake. If I'd had the review of that to refer back to, I'd've been able to compare notes more easily; tonight's production at the Playhouse was very different in all sorts of ways. For a start, it was fully staged, with an incredibly busy stage: I've always thought of Chess as a very static story, but this production managed to fill the stage with dancers and chorus nearly all the time -- which of course threw the one- and two-person scenes into much sharper relief, gave them much more of a sense of showing the private face of public characters.
( Probably only of interest to people who know the musical )
For those who haven't heard the musical (and therefore hopefully skipped all the dissection above!), I thoroughly recommend it: it's got a serious plot that's not your usual musical "girl meets boy/becomes famous/becomes a nun/flees Nazis" stuff, it's got clever and witty lyrics, and some really fantastic tunes -- several of which are available on last.fm.
Oxford Playhouse, Thursday 27th November
I wish I'd written at the time about the semi-staged production of Chess that we saw in the summer -- a marvellous birthday present from Owen, who knew that I'd've travelled a long way to see any production of Chess, so a concert performance at the Albert Hall hosted by Tim Rice (and starring Marti Pellow) was the icing on the cake. If I'd had the review of that to refer back to, I'd've been able to compare notes more easily; tonight's production at the Playhouse was very different in all sorts of ways. For a start, it was fully staged, with an incredibly busy stage: I've always thought of Chess as a very static story, but this production managed to fill the stage with dancers and chorus nearly all the time -- which of course threw the one- and two-person scenes into much sharper relief, gave them much more of a sense of showing the private face of public characters.
( Probably only of interest to people who know the musical )
For those who haven't heard the musical (and therefore hopefully skipped all the dissection above!), I thoroughly recommend it: it's got a serious plot that's not your usual musical "girl meets boy/becomes famous/becomes a nun/flees Nazis" stuff, it's got clever and witty lyrics, and some really fantastic tunes -- several of which are available on last.fm.
