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.
Everybody’s playing the game— but nobody’s rules are the same— nobody’s on nobody’s side! It may be a direct quote from one of the show’s songs, but how hauntingly true it stands to this semi-post-pandemic world we’re all trying to scrape by in as it stands. Theatre is returning, for many— despite being May of 2022— these ‘late spring’ productions are the first live-in-person performances that companies are getting to experience since closing their doors over two years ago.
After their inaugural season struck gold with the latest reworking of Chess, a jubilant celebration of In the Heights, and a megawatt production of Pulitzer Prize winner How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, all of which rivaled or improved upon their latest Broadway incarnations, The Broadway Center Stage concert series at the Kennedy Center has set a high standard with their ambitious and impressive pop-up musicals.
Are you where you want to be and who you want to be and doing what you always said you would? Tidewater Players, the resident theatre company of Havre de Grace, is where they want to be and who they want to be and doing what they always said they would! Making a bold move by opening their 2018/2019 season with a politically charged production of Chess (the musical in concert), Tidewater Players stands to set the tone for their season with this shocking opening gambit.
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,
Not throwing away their shot— no! Not throwing away their shot— whoa! The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts announced what the world of Washington DC theatergoers has been waiting to hear for months now: their official schedule for the upcoming 2017/2018 season, which of course includes the ever-coveted, infamous Broadway touring production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Storming Broadway, the nation, and the world with its wonders, the incomparable musical sensation of the 2010’s will be making an extended 14-week stay in the Opera House theatre during the summer of 2018— all but concluding the 2017/2018 theatre season for The Kennedy Center.
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,