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magidLast night I saw my first production of Chess. I'd been assured it's a wonderful musical, and I'd be willing to give it a second chance.
This was a student (undergrads, that is) production using the main ART stage. This meant that there was room for the musicians in the pit that was partly below the stage, and there was a lot of room on the set, much more so than had they been in the Loeb Ex (a smaller black box theater space in the same building; I've been to a bunch of shows there, and it's always interesting to see how it's configured differently for different shows).
Unfortunately, these did not turn out to be advantages. Some of the musicians were just fine, but others were noticeably the opposite, especially in the brass section. This makes a big difference in a musical... Not to mention that there were times they played loudly enough to overpower the songs being sung.
To go along with that, there were miking issues with most of the actors who were miked (the chorus and other incidentals weren't). There were dead spots on stage, and one of the male leads seemed to have a mike that was malfunctioning most of the time. I could barely catch any of the words in his songs/song parts at all. Through the other scenes, it was clear that this was an American brat of a chess player, but I would've liked to have heard exactly what was going on. The other lead had a bigger voice, or something; I was able to catch most of his songs. Both of the women who had major parts had lovely voices, which was the one shining highlight of the performance.
The set. What shall I say about the set? Just because you *can* have things come down from above doesn't mean it's useful or good to do so. Sometimes it can even detract from the performance, like the Levitating Chess Flying Saucer: it was supposed to be a table top or something, but had some shiny stuff around it, and was suspended on wires, so whenever an angry chess player slammed a piece down (a not-infrequent occurance), the table swung gently from the force of the impact. A plain table would've been better, and one that tilted slightly towards the audience or in some way let them see the moves would've been excellent. Of course, they *had* to place the opponents' seats facing each other, which meant the male leads were singing to each other, not the audience (feh).
Also descending from the ceiling were three columns that were completely superfluous to the story at all, used to show spaces that would've been better shown in different ways.
My other nit to pick is small, I suppose, but it really annoyed me: in the last, important match, they had the black pieces in front of the guy who made the first move. Hello? This is a show about competition-level chess, and white always goes first. Details do matter!
There were one or two other nice bits. The guy in drag in the Bangkok nightclub did a good job, as did the little girl in the opening scene.
...at least there was no lack of what to talk about, and it was nice to have people to share the awfulness with...
This was a student (undergrads, that is) production using the main ART stage. This meant that there was room for the musicians in the pit that was partly below the stage, and there was a lot of room on the set, much more so than had they been in the Loeb Ex (a smaller black box theater space in the same building; I've been to a bunch of shows there, and it's always interesting to see how it's configured differently for different shows).
Unfortunately, these did not turn out to be advantages. Some of the musicians were just fine, but others were noticeably the opposite, especially in the brass section. This makes a big difference in a musical... Not to mention that there were times they played loudly enough to overpower the songs being sung.
To go along with that, there were miking issues with most of the actors who were miked (the chorus and other incidentals weren't). There were dead spots on stage, and one of the male leads seemed to have a mike that was malfunctioning most of the time. I could barely catch any of the words in his songs/song parts at all. Through the other scenes, it was clear that this was an American brat of a chess player, but I would've liked to have heard exactly what was going on. The other lead had a bigger voice, or something; I was able to catch most of his songs. Both of the women who had major parts had lovely voices, which was the one shining highlight of the performance.
The set. What shall I say about the set? Just because you *can* have things come down from above doesn't mean it's useful or good to do so. Sometimes it can even detract from the performance, like the Levitating Chess Flying Saucer: it was supposed to be a table top or something, but had some shiny stuff around it, and was suspended on wires, so whenever an angry chess player slammed a piece down (a not-infrequent occurance), the table swung gently from the force of the impact. A plain table would've been better, and one that tilted slightly towards the audience or in some way let them see the moves would've been excellent. Of course, they *had* to place the opponents' seats facing each other, which meant the male leads were singing to each other, not the audience (feh).
Also descending from the ceiling were three columns that were completely superfluous to the story at all, used to show spaces that would've been better shown in different ways.
My other nit to pick is small, I suppose, but it really annoyed me: in the last, important match, they had the black pieces in front of the guy who made the first move. Hello? This is a show about competition-level chess, and white always goes first. Details do matter!
There were one or two other nice bits. The guy in drag in the Bangkok nightclub did a good job, as did the little girl in the opening scene.
...at least there was no lack of what to talk about, and it was nice to have people to share the awfulness with...