Chess the Musical

Recently I saw the musical Chess at the State Theatre, performed by The Production Company. I found the way the whole musical was staged very interesting. The stage was very simple, a huge chess board set on an angle (the corner pointing towards the audience), took up most of the stage; from the far point of the board, was a runway leading backstage. Beside the runway were two large banners one on each side, these most often had projections of the USA and USSR flags, but changed at various points in the show to help with the story. The orchestra was on stage, split on either side of the chess board. The only major set changes throughout the whole show was a small chess table which was bought on and off for the different chess tournaments. The costumes were very dramatic; for most of the time the chorus and dancers wore dramatic costumes of black and white. The ladies wore a variety of skirts and dresses with differently patterned black and white tights (checked, striped, plain with one black leg and one white) and the men wore a variety of suits and jackets. At some points the chorus played the press and they simply added cream and grey trench coats and black hats to cover their other outfits. There were only two scenes with colourful costumes, firstly Merano (Italy) which involved red, white and green costumes and flags. The other was the one night in Bangkok scene, which had the cast in gold, pink and purple traditional dress and gold chain dancer outfits, with a variety of extravagant gold head pieces. It was a fantastic show with well thought out and clever design.