Theatre review: Chess

Growing up in the 1980s I remember chess championships, particularly those that pitted an American grand master against a Soviet one, always seeming to be in the news, so at the time basing a blockbuster musical around a chess match didn't seem entirely like a terrible idea. But time can put perspective on a lot of things, and from a viewpoint not just of 2018 but pretty much every year since Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice's Chess first took to the stage it's been obvious that it is, entirely, a terrible idea. Musically, the songwriting team behind ABBA provide some predictably strong numbers, but the story is so notoriously bad that it's been constantly rewritten in a desperate attempt to make it even borderline comprehensible. This is the third production I've seen, each using a slightly different book, and this one barely uses any book at all, but after thirty-odd years of rewriting at least one thing has succeeded: In terms of the basic story beats at least, it is now borderline comprehensible.

Theatre review: Sweeney Todd

Sometimes you can feel a lot better about yourself by spending some time with the very worst specimens of humanity. But enough about Vanessa, who's a big Stephen Sondheim fan and so got first dibs on my spare ticket for Sweeney Todd, now at the Adelphi in Jonathan Kent's production, originally seen in Chichester. Anthony Ward's multi-level set of metal staircases and curving walkways is an industrial Dante's Inferno in which *Michael Ball* can take centre stage as the vengeful barber, Benjamin Barker, who was transported to Australia because the corrupt Judge Turpin (John Bowe) wanted a shot at his wife. Changing his name to Sweeney Todd, Barker returns to his old Fleet Street premises above a pie shop, and plots bloody revenge on Turpin and his accomplice Beadle Bamford (Peter Polycarpou.) Meanwhile he tries to get back the daughter the judge raised, and is now trying to force into marriage.