THE MUSICAL
Welcome to the RJS virtual production of Chess.
Chess is without doubt my all time favourite musical. I have seen all the major productions of the show - London ‘86, Broadway ‘88, Sydney ’90 and Stockholm ’02. Of all these, London is still my favourite version and I find that with every rewrite and new production the show loses a lot more than it gains. I am the first to admit that the London production was far from perfect but it still stands up as the most complete version of the show. I really do feel that within Chess there is a fantastic musical production waiting to get out, but as of yet it has not been given the design, direction and rewriting that it needs.
Of course being a would-be director I am naturally going to be of the opinion that my version of the show would be the best! I did hope for a while that I might get the chance to prove this by staging my own production of the show, but I always wanted to change too much and so a licence could never be granted. Now, with the wonder of the web I hope to ‘stage’ my own version in words and pictures. I won’t be including the entire script that I have written for the show, but I will provide you with a synopsis, a detailed description of the staging, some sketches of the sets and costumes and eventually photographs of the set model.
I hope that by reading the detailed descriptions you will be able to imagine yourself sitting in a theatre and watching the show being staged in front of your eyes. It’s been difficult to decide exactly what is the best way to format the ‘performance’. Originally I was going to do separate paragraphs for the synopsis and the staging, but in the end I felt that the best way to make the whole thing flow like a real production, was to combine everything together. I hope this works for you and that you enjoy the performance. I would be more than happy to hear what you think, both of the virtual concept itself and my ideas for the show.
There are many ideas that may not work and I have several different ideas and locations for the same scenes. This version is the one that I feel comes closes to correcting the things that I think were problematic in the show. Many of you will disagree with them and I will look forward to hearing your thoughts. I will also explain some of my own alternative ideas during the after show party, where we will eagerly await the arrival of the reviews.
In the meantime, sit back, read your programme and enjoy the show!
RJS
The RJS Script
ART GALLERY
