Eleventh Show – Chess in Concert

Monday i went to the Royal Albert Hall for the 21st Anniversary of Chess concert. If anyone has seen the Les Mis concert it was done in nearly the same way as that. Mostly it was a concert with the actors in costume but rather than sitting down like the Les Mis one they did enter and exit the stage when it wasn’t their songs. Also the main difference was the Les Mis cast was made up of fan/producer favourites from the world wide casts. With Chess because it hasn’t been playing so long they made up the cast out of big names who while they did well didn’t quite have the connection to the characters. One person in particular who will remain nameless spent nearly the entire perfomance with their head sort of lowered. I thought it was a strange acting choice until somebody closer to the stage pointed out thats where the autocue was.

Anyway before going i hadn’t really heard much of Chess beyond One Night In Bangkok, I Know Him So Well and Pity the Child and for once i decided not to listen to anything till I heard it on the night and so I had no idea who sang what and what was coming up. I have to say I really loved the music. Despite some major issues with sound (more on that later) the music I could hear clearly and was blown away by it. A lot of the lyrics were lost on me but the music itself was good.

As for the all star cast… First off i’d like to thank whoever came up with the idea for having these four actors together on stage. Secondly i’d like to slap whoever came up with the idea for having these four actors together on stage… The fangirls are scary!!! Josh Groban has an amazing voice and vocally pulled off Anatoly, his version of Anthem nearly brought the house down it was so great. I’ve never been a huge fan of his but he impressed me although you can tell he was hired for his voice and not his acting. Adam Pascall was awesome i’ve loved his voice since hearing him in Rent but I have never particularly cared about Roger so usually his performance is lost on me. His Pity the Child was amazing, his One Night Bangkok also was pretty cool but i loved seeing him in a role I liked. Kerry Ellis was fantastic in the Svetlana role. Her voice is just beautiful and hearing Somebody Else’s Story done by her was a highlight. But the person I was mainly there to see was Idina… who i was a little underwhelmed by. It pains me to say this but she was a little hit and miss. Mind you the songs she hit I was blown away by. Nobody’s Side was brilliant and I loved the duets between her and Josh and her and Kerry singing I Know Him So Well was amazing but some of the misses were also dissapointing. The role seems a little too high for her in parts, her belting is brilliant but some of the stuff early on was just a little screechy (at least to where i was sitting). I’m going to her concert next week though which is gonna mostly be stuff from her solo cd which i can’t wait to hear because i think that will be a lot better. And on a completely shallow level she’s so pretty.

Oh and I have to mention the supporting cast David Bedella (who i loved in Jerry Springer: the Opera) was fantastic and actually was probably the only cast member I understood pretty much all night. He was awesome both acting and musically. Marti Pellow was okay… he didn’t really leave an impression one way or another. It was great to see Jon Robyns (who was Princeton/Rod in Avenue Q) and Aiofe Mullholland (from How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria). Also the choir was brilliant and the dancers weren’t bad either.

The one bad part of the evening the sound sucked badly. I was dead centre in the first tier and I had an amazing view but at points I could barely understand what was being sung and that wasn’t because of the diction it was because of the echoey reverb from around the hall. Also it sounded like the Orchestra was playing over the actors. Apparently they’ve had complaints at the hall for the last two days and they have had to apologise for the bad quality of it. It was a little annoying but luckily on the big songs with the big moments it seemed to even out a bit and you could hear things a lot clearer.

They also recorded this for DVD which i’m hoping they’ll be able to fix the sound quality on. Also hoping they release a cd of it because i’d love to have it on my iPod.

Tags: musical theatre