Sixteen pieces a side, 32 in all, and 64 squares. There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. Then 72,084 positions after two, 9 million after three and more than 288 billion after four.We are talking chess – for some the most enthralling and mind-boggling of games. For others, the deadliest dullest bore which is beyond comprehension.All praise then, to “64 Squares,” the production devised by members of the Rhum & Clay Company now playing in London at one of the British capital’s coolest new venues, the New Diorama.The show does a creditable job in making the subject interesting, dramatic and even fun.The four actors all play the same character: “You might have noticed that there are four of me. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”The hero, or antihero, has a memory blown apart in a trauma, we are told. Being so divided, he struggles to remember even his name – which is “B.” At least that is the name on his jacket. He still turns into a chess-champion-beating machine when his chance comes.Actors Julian Spooner and Matthew Wells double up as grandmaster and challenger in a battle of nerves. Róisín O’Mahony is also inventive as she fits into the choreographed moves and snaps from one part to another in seconds.They make inventive and amusing use of minimal pops – a chess board becomes an ocean liner, then a clock as a torch shines on it. The fourth actor, Fred McLaren, uses a drum kit to produce sounds from sea waves to jazz and assorted crashes.Lines along the way raise a smile: “You’re foreign.” “Aren’t they all these days?”The play, based on Stefan Zweig’s novella “The Royal Game,” has little lines repeating endlessly: “Do not be alarmed.” “Shall I take these to the post room?”B’s backstory includes an office romance, hiding files from the Nazis, the annexation of Austria, a Gestapo interrogation, and his immersion in a book about “150 Great Chess Games.” Just every now and again it gets a little too mannered and Edinburgh-Festival-fashionable confusing, and does almost beg the question B puts in the dying minutes, “what does it matter?” He follows that tempting of fate by saying “all you can do is to learn to live with who you have become.” He then gives praise for things both good and bad: only those who know light and dark, rise and fall, have really lived.Overall, this is a clever and funny show as wonderful as it is weird.The play is at the 80-seat New Diorama, part of British Land’s Regents Place Development and the winner of Peter Brook awards. It has been establishing its name over five years in a crowded market. Local office workers surely know of it, now it is time to get more on the map as a place to visit. It has a modern auditorium and bar area, just a couple of minutes’ walk from Warren Street Tube station.Alongside our West End coverage, this is the first in a planned series highlighting such alternative and fringe theaters.There are an increasing number of them, some nurturing new work and others restaging shows that have made it elsewhere first.A long short list could run to dozens, even not counting the central ones such as Soho, Duchess, Arts, Trafalgar Studios, Leicester Square or Donmar – and also not including the established and obvious places such as the Royal Court, the Young Vic and the Almeida, which have long been hotbeds of new talent.Some top picks: St. James Theatre; Arcola; Menier Chocolate Factory; The Gate, Notting Hill; Southwark Playhouse; Battersea Arts Centre; The Tricycle, Kilburn; Hampstead Theatre and pubs such as the Hen and Chickens.“64 Squares” continues at the New Diorama until November 21. Information: http://newdiorama.com/
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