Chess From Royal Albert Hall - Review — Page 6

I love Chess, but the book never worked. I saw it on Bway, which was a big disappointment except for Kuhn and Carroll who were terrific. I am one of those who feel like the original book works best.

Idina was terrible, imo, but not just because of her shaky vocals. Her acting was abismal! Groban had better technique! He was much better than I expected and sounded wonderful. I was most taken with Pascal whom I've never really "got". He made a terrific Freddie, imo...although his nipples were distracting. Whoever wondered about his costume, the black and white/good and bad/east and west idea is like a sledgehammer and was on broadway too.

I do love Ellis' voice and she was a nice highlight, though as much as I like "Someone Else's Story", it is so unnecessary that it sticks out to me, though the switch to Svetlana made more sense than Florence singing it.

I was unimpressed with Marti as the Arbiter. His voice was okay, though a bit muted for the role imo, but he seemed almost as uncomfortable as Menzel.

The choreography was terrible and made me hate the onstage chorus. SO distracting, and just bad choreography. I did think the larger chorus sounded great...but did we need cheerleaders? REally?

I think Freddy is always played with sexual ambiguity and it works for the character...I've always wondered if he was gay, but still felt like the "love triangle" works. Whether he wants to sleep with Florence is irrelevant. She is the most important person in his sad life...he does love her. I love alot of women and never wanted to "do it" with them...and would be very jealous of someone who I felt was trying to take them away from me. I've never read sexual tension in their relationship or that they were sleeping together.

BTW, Florence's father does turn out to be an imposter in the bway version.

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It's all based on a true story.

Tim Rice is from that last generation of Brits raised and educated to believe they were going to rule an empire, only to find out that there wasn't an empire left to rule.

Writing lyrics and, heaven forbid, books for musicals is so obviously his third career choice: it's lucrative but really it's all too degrading when he should be sat in the Foreign Office.

Updated On: 6/19/09 at 06:20 PM

"Tim Rice is from that last generation of Brits raised and educated to believe they were going to rule an empire, only to find out that there wasn't an empire left to rule.

Writing lyrics and, heaven forbid, books for musicals is so obviously his third career choice: it's lucrative but really it's all too degrading when he should be sat in the Foreign Office. "

I just don't buy this. Do you know Tim Rice so well that you know what he really want to be? So an artist should not touch politics in his work? If he did, he must have some personal political agenda and ambition? What about he may find the story fascinating and want to create something unique? Yes, his works involved politics a lot and what's wrong with that? And even if he did have personal political agenda, what's wrong with that?

Quoting WestEnd2: "And that's one of my problems, they've had to take the sound direct from the singer's mics, and that just makes it sound flat, I like a bit of the sound of a performer's voice echoing through the auditorium and not the flat and dull sound on the DVD and CD."

I completely agree. You've hit the nail right on the head. That's why I keep on bringing up the 1995 LES MIZ concert, which was held in the same hall, as well as the Andrew Lloyd Webber Birthday Concert in 1998. The performers in those concerts didn't need their voices to get fixed up so much in order to make such concerts presentable for commercial release as much as the performers in this version of CHESS did. The bootleg of this CHESS has more of that "echoing through the auditorium" sound (which the LES MIZ concert has) though not as clear as the piped in (but flat) sound on the CD and DVD. Plus, the bootleg reveals more of the vocal snafus of the singers.

Well, it is what it is and what's done is done. I still love the score. Here's hoping a "Dream Cast" of sorts will preserve it in the future.

Is the DVD quality better than what appeared on PBS? Does it have subtitles?

The DVD does offer English subtitles but the visual quality of the disc is not noticeably different from the broadcast. As someone mentioned earlier, there is a SURROUND SOUND audio option but it still doesn't really fix any of the sound problems that I heard in the PBS telecast.

"Do you know Tim Rice so well that you know what he really want to be?"

I don't know him at all. But I've read enough of his interviews, heard him enough on UK radio and seen enough of him on British panel shows to know what he thinks and how he got into musical theatre.

"Yes, his works involved politics a lot and what's wrong with that?"

Absolutely nothing. I never said there was. Read any of my posts on this site about how Billy Elliott is a musical about the failure of "the experiment of socialism in a democracy" and you'll see I welcome it. I love the student angst politics of Evita. And I like the original concept of Chess.

What I'm saying is that because he regards writing musicals as an accident he fell into, he is a lazy and inadequate author, and thus never realised that brilliant original concept.

As for Caryl Churchill, it's a shame that the rumoured collaboration with Sondheim never materialised.

I've only made it half-way through, but I can understand why this show didn't work on Broadway. I'm hella confused. Cheerleaders? a Ballet? What? A whole show about chess? What? The songs - for the most part - are pretty and memorable, but I'm just not into the story whatsoever.

Could someone please explain the story in a nutshell? I, like many others no doubt, was really confused at what was happening in this version, especially after watching the Actors Benefit version.

And I think the love story between Anatoly and Florence had so much potential, but they didn't have enough intimate scenes (also the kiss was cut because the Queen was there?!) to make it affecting. And yeah they could have cut out so much of the dancing and Merano choir to make room for this stuff.

But loved the music!

Just to clear up the widescreen issue -- it's definitely in 16x9 anamorphic widescreen. Amazon's specs are often fishy.

^^ Thank you! That's what I had been trying to explain to people. It was a concert version put together over just a few days, not a full scale production and I wouldn't have expected the performances to be up to the standard required for a full production. I actually quite liked Idina as Florence. Have I heard better? Sure. But I don't believe she should be taking the flack she's getting. Honestly, I was a little disappointed by just about everyone involved in some way, and Idina was certainly not the weakest link.
As others have said, I thought the sound was terrible. I was so looking forward to hearing the score with the huge orchestra and in such an amazing venue, what a let down. I wish they hadn't tried to stage it the way they did. The Les Mis concert worked so beautifully just relying on the score, they should have done the same for Chess.

I have never seen Chess, even in my native country England and I live in the capital.

I always assumed that America did not take well to Chess, given it only lasted 46 performances at the Imperial?