Theatre review: Ravens: Spassky vs. Fisher

You might think that a game of chess would be hard to make a compelling stage story out of, but as Chess has been proving for the last thirty years… you’d be right. But this hasn’t dissuaded playwrighting bear Tom Morton-Smith from giving his own take on the way a board game ended up encapsulating the entire Cold War; instead of fictionalised versions and illicit affairs he goes back to the real people who, like it or not, found themselves representing the entirety of the USSR and USA in Ravens: Spassky vs. Fischer. While the Arms Race and Space Race provided the most direct dick-measuring contest between the two nations, each also attempted to dominate in fields that more obliquely showed off their strengths and values: Movies for America, while Russia had ballet, circus and chess. Boris Spassky (Ronan Raftery) is the latest in a long line of Soviet chess champions, and the first to be in serious danger of losing the title to an American, as former child prodigy Bobby Fischer (Robert Emms) has been climbing up the ranks and is now challenging him at the 1972 World Championship in Reykjavik.

But as the first game in the championship is due to start Fischer hasn’t even boarded the plane to Iceland yet, and it takes a phone call from Henry Kissinger (Solomon Israel) to get him to leave New York and prevent the match from being forfeited. Although his fear of being expected to represent his country seems genuine, his erratic behaviour starts to look planned as it continues throughout the tournament: Having lost the first couple of games he makes increasingly wild demands – constantly wanting the furniture and chess board replaced, claiming the arena audience is putting him off and getting the third game moved to a broom cupboard, and claiming the cameras broadcasting the match worldwide are emitting noises only he can hear.

Spassky, who has a three-strong team of tacticians (Beruce Khan, Rebecca Scroggs and Gyuri Sarossy) planning how to defeat his opponent, wants to keep the mind games and strategy purely on the chess board, but Fischer’s behaviour starts to get to him, along with the pressure of representing the Soviet Union on the world stage, and the fear of repercussions back home if he loses the title. Soon not only is he losing matches but also succumbing to paranoia, believing his food and drink is being spiked and his rooms bugged (by whose side becomes increasingly irrelevant.) Ravens’ central theme is this idea of the Cold War in microcosm, and how two men who get their kicks above the waistline, sunshine, and would like to think of themselves as not relating to politics, find themselves at the heart of it regardless and crumble under the pressure.

The unpredictable, vicious Fischer is a gift of a role that Emms throws all his energy into, convincing as someone who, on the one hand, probably does have some serious mental health issues that torture him, but on the other is clearly taking advantage of his reputation for eccentricity to play psychological games and destabilise his opponent. He’s a hard character to like – Fischer was viciously anti-Semitic despite or because of his own Jewish background, and the play suggests this may be in part an extension of his hatred for his mother (Emma Pallant) – but a fascinating one to watch, and only remotely humanised in the scenes of his growing friendship with bodyguard Sæmi-Rokk (Gary Shelford.) On the other hand he downright tortures the Icelandic organisers (Gunnar Cauthery, Simon Chandler and Philip Desmeules,) leading to the other major theme of the play: The concept of “genius” and the expectation that it comes with a dose of insanity, and to what extent we should tolerate the latter for the former. The title comes from a legend about the origin of Iceland, with the two grand masters as the birds who discovered new land, but as Max (Chandler) worries, if Fischer’s entitled man-child behaviour is tolerated, he could end up being a trailblazer primarily in making others believe they can throw out the rulebook if they’re good enough.

Central to the story are of course 20-odd games of chess, which Annabelle Comyn’s production deals with in expressionistic style, giving each game a distinctive soundtrack and movement, often with an element of dance – Spassky dances robotically at the board while Fischer slides around the room on his expensive chair, the two face off against each other like gunfighters, trash the room, or stay motionless while storms rage around them. It keeps a freshness to a story that’s quite static in nature, confined to the brown conference rooms and hotel rooms of Jamie Vartan’s authentically drab late ‘60s, early ‘70s set, but isn’t quite enough to stop the show from outstaying its welcome. A running time that knocks on the three-hour mark needs to justify itself and although it comes close, Comyn’s production doesn’t quite manage to make the intimate events as epic as the Cold War they’re reflecting. Morton-Smith does just about manage to make the story hold the interest for the whole evening, and while it’s not an unqualified hit it does approach its big subjects in an entertaining way.

Ravens: Spassky vs. Fischer by Tom Morton-Smith is booking until the 18th of January at Hampstead Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes including interval.