Musicals don't get much more '80s than Tim Rice, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus'
Chess, which uses the rivalry between Russian and American Grand Masters as a metaphor for the Cold War. With music from the songwriters behind ABBA there's a lot of catchy tunes; the story is a bit more of a muddled affair, and Rice has regularly tinkered with the book over the years. His latest version premiered as a concert performance but Christopher Howell and Steven Harris' revival at the Union is the first time this "definitive" version has been fully staged. Ryan Dawson Laight's design configures the space into a thrust with a high platform upstage; you'll probably want to make sure you don't get stuck behind one of the pillars as the platform will probably be badly obscured from there but from our seats, at the corner of the stage, we could see fine.
