Review of Chess at the London Coliseum
Michael Ball Photography BrinkhoffMögenburg It’s always nice when two of your favourite things come together – for example, musical theatre and ABBA. So when I was asked if I wanted to go and see the new version of Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice’s musical Chess at the Coliseum. I leapt at the chance. Set during the height of the cold war, Chess is the story of two Chess Grandmasters – Frederick Trumper (Tim Howar) from the USA and Russian Anatoly Sergievsky (Michael Ball) – battling it out to be world champions under the watchful eye of The Arbiter (Cedric Neal). Both men are totally different. Trumper is loud, brash, arrogant and often ends up arguing with his ‘second’ Florence (Cassidy Janson). On the other hand, Anatoly is a family man, married to Svetlana (Alexandra Burke) and, by all appearances, a dedicated ambassador of the Soviet Union, particularly under the watchful eye of his state-appointed ‘second’ Ivan Molokov (Philip Browne). As t...