Chess has had what you might call a chequered career. first seen in London in 1986, and flopping on Broadway, it is now back in town, tweaked and tightened, some 32 years later at Frank Matcham's magnificent Coliseum Theatre, an apposite setting for this stately, semi-staged production.
From where I sat at the front of the dress circle, though, it didn't look semi-staged at all. Matthew Kinley's simply striking design scatters both stage and side screens with neon-lit chess squares. and very effective they are, too. There's an ensemble cast of 20-plus, an Eno chorus of a further 20 and a well-stocked resident orchestra on a raised platform at the back of the stage that, under John Rigby's assured baton, does full justice to Benny and Björn's (the boys from Abba) lush score, even if the sound system does sometimes swamp Tim Rice's clever lyrics.
The story is simple enough. an American grandmaster, Freddie Trumper, is pitted against his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Sergievsky, the latter doubly humiliating the former by both trouncing him at the chess table and taking off with his wife. Canadian-born Tim Howard captures well the American in-your-face chippiness and handles his big solo number Pity the child superbly, although elsewhere sometimes crosses the line between singing and shouting. Cassidy Janson, so good recently as Carole King in the musical Beautiful, sings as well as she acts and brings real pathos to her final duet with Anatoly, you and i.
One last thing. I'm assuming producers Michael Linnit and Michael Grade have done their sums, but given that this lavish, occasionally overblown production runs only until 2 June, they'll need each one of those 2,359 seats full at every performance, I'd have thought.