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This review was of the show's run in April 2014.
Separated from her young daughter and doing time for murdering her violent husband, Chess lives a life of stagnation: she’s stuck behind bars, yearning for the things she has lost, battered by the echoing memory of her mistakes.
Prison dramas can feel like stale territory, but where this one by hip young London poet Kate Tempest stands out is in conveying the fundamental isolation of a life lived on the inside. Chess met her soulmate Serena in prison, but Serena’s crime is less serious and she got parole while Chess is back to the starting blocks. She’s alone to face her situation once again, with an intense absence where once she had love.
Cat Simmons plays Chess as a jittery, taut bundle of fear and dreams. She and Gbemisola Ikumelo’s Serena have a funny, engaging chemistry that’s completely involving. Hope for Chess comes from music. She sings loudly and beautifully in her cell – much to the chagrin of her neighbours - and when she starts a music course, life gets more complicated, but a ultimately a little better.
Simmons’s voice is as arresting and raw as a broken heart and she infuses the songs with heavy soul. The hip hop and rap music is the piece’s crowning strength. Written by Tempest and Dan Carey, it is ebullient, catchy and poetic.
Stef O’Driscoll and James Grieve’s production uses sound and light to evoke prison life. Small suggestions of the place – echoes, chattering, slams, beeps – come together to give a glimpse of the monotony of incarceration. It’s a production that goes some way to show the layers of pain, fear and regret locked up with convicts all over the country.
Tempest’s denouement is simple and a little sentimental. But the play isn’t the weaker for it and mostly ‘Hopelessly Devoted’ is very good.