64 Squares

Chess is a game of cause and effect. Every action triggers a reaction, every move needs a response. The endgame is determined, in part, by the first few moves. There’s no going back. All you can do is make the best of your circumstances.

Inspired by Stefan Zweig’s novella The Royal Game (or Chess Story), Rhum and Clay’s perky devised piece turns the Sport of Kings into a metaphor for the passage of life.

In Zweig’s story, a Nazi prisoner called Dr B survives a long stint in solitary confinement, memorising a book of historic chess matches to stay sane. Years later, on a cruise ship, he has the chance to take on a Grand Master, Mirko Czentovic, and, by recalling his past form, knows exactly which mistakes to avoid in order to win.

Rhum and Clay smartly expand that story to split "B" in three – four if you include the silent figure sat at the drums, providing a zippy jazz backbeat for Christopher Harrison’s tumbling production. Before prison, each version of "B" had a slightly different encounter with a secretary that, down the line, determines their fate: win, lose or draw. “All you can do,” says B, “is learn to live with what you become.”

Told with a swish momentum and given a mid-century Mitteleuropean charm thanks to Amelia Jane Hankin’s design, it’s a fine illustration of the limits of our free will.