Dancingthrulife2 said: "At the intermission now. Wow, what a letdown with such a promising cast. To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to have a Japanese ensemble when most of them have diction problemswith the English language, which is understandable but which inevitably makes it quite difficult to make out most of the lines, at least for me. (I do understand Japanese, but while peeking at the lyrics is no problem to me since I’m a fast reader, it just feels jarring.)Forthe first act, the pacing is all over the place,and I don’t feel the story, while there are some notable moments, is built up towards a conflict that demands an Act II to resolve nor somewhere interesting that Iwant to come back to and know more about. Ramin’s anthem about always having a place in his heart for his homeland that concludes Act I also comes out of nowhere and is not really earned nor the inevitable result of the plot development. I know that this is a sung through musical, but most of the big musics numbers just like the Act 1 finisher needmore contextualization.The use of projection/LED screen? also feels way too on the nose after being spoiled by some of the marvelous moments in van Hove’s WSS revival. It just doesn’t add anything to the storytelling and repeats what is already in the lyrics. To be honest, I don’t know if I should fault many of the jarring directing choices on the director or the material. From what I’ve seen the show seems to be a sung-thru musical that desperately needs some book(-ish) scenes to fill the gaps."
Chess is one of my favorite musicals but you're not wrong about the book. It never should have been a sung-through musical, and making it so only resulted in this weird, elliptical, lopsided story that neither flows nor arcs properly. Of course, when they did make it a book musical for the Broadway version, they somehow made it even worse. My hope is that someday, somehow, someone will figure out a way to make this musical work, because there's a brilliant piece of theater buried in there.
