If this was just a concert, it would be a good concert.īut holy moly does the rest of ‘Chess’ feel dated.įor absolute starters, the plot feels like it could only have come from a very specific era in which a non-ironic yarn about bad-boy Cold War chess players (ikr?) seemed like a viable scenario for a musical. The lesser-known Tim Howar (the current singer of Mike and the Mechanics for his sins) has a wonderfully versatile rock voice. Laurence Connor’s new production – the latest in the ENO’s semi-staged series of musical theatre revivals – has the vocal talent to do justice to its score. ‘I Know Him So Well’ and ‘One Night In Bangkok’ were actual pop hits, and the other songs are mostly on the strong side, all pulsing synths and hummable ballads. Originally running for three years in the West End from 1986, ‘Chess’, by Tim Rice and the blokes from Abba (aka Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus) has a genuinely fantastic score, perhaps one of the few musicals between ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Hamilton’ to meaningfully sound like a worthwhile product of the popular music of its day. From the decade that brought you the daft musical about cats and the daft musical about trains, it’s the return of ‘Chess’, the daft musical about, you know, chess.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |