Chess, Chicago, and Chills
22 – 28 November 2025
Saturday 22 November
New York – At Radio City Music Hall, the Christmas Spectacular is an annual holiday-season ritual. It unites the theatre’s astonishing stage machinery with the Rockettes’ physical prowess in an unabashed celebration of the season. In recent years, the visuals have grown more sophisticated thanks to projection technologies that now envelop the auditorium’s great shell, making the show even more immersive. I attended a performance from the Third Mezzanine, where the sightlines were excellent — as they reportedly are from nearly all 6,000 seats. This was my twelfth visit, yet once more I was spellbound when the orchestra pit, having risen from the depths, began gliding toward the back of the stage.
It’s rarely a good sign when every element in a production appears to shout “We don’t trust the material.” Unfortunately, that was my impression of the new Chess at the Imperial Theatre. Contemporary audiences may indeed be less familiar with the Cold War, but what could have been an opportunity for clarity or context was replaced by distancing and easy ridicule. Recent stagings (London 2018, Baden bei Wien 2025) have shown convincingly that Chess can hold its ground when treated seriously. There were authoritative performances from Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele, and — most vividly — Nicholas Christopher. By contrast, Bryce Pinkham was saddled with much of the production’s weakest material, and his character concentrated nearly everything I disliked about the show.
Back at my hotel, I followed Apple TV’s first suggestion and watched Simon Cellan Jones’s The Family Plan 2 (2025), an action comedy starring Mark Wahlberg that proved far more digestible than expected. The London and Paris settings certainly helped. Most arresting was a scene at the Petit Palais, where Wahlberg’s character meets his half-brother (played with gusto by Kit Harington) before an imaginary Georges Seurat retrospective: they sit before Bathers at Asnières (which hangs in London) while A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (in Chicago) stands obligingly beside them. I’d be curious to know what led the filmmakers to this charming act of geographical wish-fulfilment. Another pleasure was to come across Sidse Babett Knudsen once again — in a part far removed from her characters in Borgen and L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche.
The day ended at New World Stages with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The night proved unusual for at least two reasons. First, Daniel Radcliffe was among the audience volunteers drafted into the spelling lineup — only to be eliminated on “theatre,” of all words. Second, roughly twenty-five minutes before the end, a fire alarm triggered a full evacuation of the building. Happily, the show soon resumed where it had stopped. I left reassured that there is still room for innocent, witty musical comedy on (or, in this case, just off) Broadway — especially with a cast this strong. Jasmine Amy Rogers, the amazing star of Boop!, shone as Olive Ostrovsky.
Flew back to Paris.
Wednesday 26 November
Paris — A replica production of the musical Chicago had already played the Casino de Paris in 2004, but its French-language adaptation had, to put it mildly, flouted the rules of prosody. The new version I attended, in the very same theatre, still reproduced Walter Bobbie’s staging, but this time relied on an adaptation (by Nicolas Engel) so deftly crafted it ought to be required reading for would-be adaptors. I kept marvelling at the impeccable scansion, internal rhymes and inspired transpositions. Thankfully, the company and orchestra were equally accomplished, and the evening unfolded like a dream.
Thursday 27 November
Paris – At the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, Daniele Gatti conducted the Orchestre National de France (which he music-directed from 2008 to 2016) in a cleverly curated programme devoted to the city of Rome. After supple, lyrical interpretations of Berlioz’s overture Le Carnaval romain and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 came a moment of rare grace with Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome. In an almost metaphysical experience, Gatti drew from the orchestra a performance that stirred the soul, warmed the blood, and sent shivers down the spine. The musicians, utterly transfixed, seemed to play suspended in another dimension.
Friday 28 November
Paris – At the Théâtre de la Ville, a collaboration between Nina Laisné, François Chaignaud and Nadia Larcher titled Último Helecho and described as an exploration of Argentinean and Peruvian musical traditions through song and dance failed to deliver any impact. Somehow, sitting unmoved through a performance helps recalibrate one’s enjoyment scale, so to speak.
And so, for now, the lights dim… until the next act.