Throw the rulebook right out the window. It won’t help you anyway. And forget what you think you know about Chess as that won’t help you here either. Can’t even say “not your Grandfather’s Chess” because there are so many different variations on this concept album-turned-musical-come-concert-album that it’s hard to pinpoint which one is the one for a standard basis of comparison. Based on an idea by Tim Rice, inspired wholly if not incompletely by historical events.
2018: the entire world— of Washington DC— is on high alert. No one can deny these are difficult times, especially if you’re trying to snag a ticket into the pre-Broadway trial engagement of Chess now appearing at The Kennedy Center for its limited five-day run. With a new book by Danny Strong, the musical— originally conceived by Tim Rice, Benny Andersson, and Björn Ulvaeus— is more potent than ever in its political charge,
We go on pretending that stories like ours have happy endings. But in the game of chess, who can say where the story will end? One king conquered, one queen fallen; a gripping story of love, war, and a deceptively simple board game set to stirring music comes to live in the Kensington Arts Theatre production of Chess the musical. With their most ambitious production to date, KAT succeeds in winning over the audience with the Music of Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson,