Chess: The Musical Review (Curve Theatre Studio, Leicester, Personal)

 🌟 Chess: The Musical 🌟

13 August 2022 at 2:30pm at Curve Theatre Studio, Leicester

Presented by the National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) organisation, this modernised interpretation of ‘Chess: The Musical’ revived the cult classic within such an intimate performance space, inviting audiences onto the stage to feel immersed within the tensions of the 1980s Cold War conflicts of Soviets and Americans, though sometimes closer than audiences bargained for.

Directed by Alex Sutton, the abstraction of the staging served successfully as to draw audiences out of a mundane reality of the Chess competition. Sequences of the board game were presented with intricate physical theatre/ballet movement work in the essence that every movement could make or break the situation, with very withdrawn underscore from the live orchestra, beautifully crafted to celebrate the art of chess. It cannot go without being mentioned that the breakthrough leading lady Tilly Ducker, as her sensational vocal ability didn’t scream aggression or passion, but a vulnerability and timidity that encapsulated Florence Vassy as a more relatable and understandable protagonist. With the character of Freddie gender swapped for the first time in the show’s major history, she is seen as much more lustful, particularly in ‘One Night in Bangkok’ (the no.3 hit in the North American Charts), though as the audience have lost a male Freddie, his usual arrogance and manipulative aggression seemed misplaced or even missing.

Immediately walking into the Leicester Curve’s studio, audiences are greeted with huge concrete pillars which hang menacingly over the stage, so before the show starts you are invited into this monochromatic and brutalist atmosphere. Laid along the floor were LED batons, which during the opening number were picked up to mimic a lightsabre war, and alongside red backlighting gave a subtle nod to the Star Wars franchise, though the political themes of the musical felt lost in this moment, as the tradition of the game of chess felt lost in a battle of genres and culture. Alongside Tim Rice, the score was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, of pop group ABBA. With a small interjection of Mamma Mia to juxtapose the tension of the opening of Act 2, this funny quip was a fond memory of the shows original creators. Projection and live camera footage of onstage action was very uniquely presented to bring us into the media storm of the Cold War, and how bias can immediately effect our view.

I had a lot of love for this show ahead of seeing it, though my bias does not change the fact this young cast is absolutely phenomenal, as penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber “NYMT is the best youth music theatre in the world”. Only minor creative decisions disrupted the classical and traditional sense that ‘Chess: The Musical’ is intended to convey, though this production will most certainly go down as one of the group’s most successful and emotive pieces in history, the attack of Nikolai Foster’s Billy Elliot being drawn through the walls of the Curve’s main space to influence this production.

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