Broadway review by Adam Feldman
The story of Chess dates back to the 1980s, and so do efforts to fix it. This overheated Cold War musical, by lyricist Tim Rice and ABBA songsmiths Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus, began as a 1984 concept album (which yielded the unlikely radio hit “One Night in Bangkok”). But its original London production was a mess, and its 1988 Broadway incarnation, which framed the songs in a completely new book, closed in under two months. The script has been reworked countless times since then, as different writers keep moving its pieces around, trying to solve the large set of Chess problems. None have cracked it yet, and the show’s latest revisal, with yet another completely new book, inspires little hope that anyone will.
Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
“No one’s way of life is threatened by a flop,” sings the chorus in what is now the show’s opening number, and while that sentiment has a ring of wishful thinking here, it does speak to a certain strain of showtune culture. Many musicals that are not initially successful attract passionate fandoms—perhaps all the more passionate for their underdog spirit—and subsequent versions of such shows are sometimes markedly better (like the recent version of Merrily We Roll Along or the charming current production of The Baker’s Wife). That is not the case with Chess. The production at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, directed by Michael Mayer, has plenty of good moves. Memorable and tuneful songs, including some bona fide bangers? Check! Slickly staged musical numbers? Check! Talented actor-singers Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher in the lead roles? Check, check, check!—but no checkmate. Once again, the show blows its assets; shackled to storytelling that is arguably worse than ever, Chess goes down in forfeit.
Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
I’ll start with the assets. At the musical’s center is a love triangle involving rival Grandmasters—the volatile and paranoid American, Freddie (Tveit), and the more sensitive Soviet, Anatoly (Christopher)—and Florence (Michele), a Hungarian-born chess strategist. In this version, it’s more of a love rectangle, thanks to the beefed-up presence in Act II of Anatoly’s estranged wife, Svetlana (a flinty Hannah Cruz, in a floor-length leather coat). Though the score—now credited equally to Rice, Anderson and Ulvaeus—sometimes tends toward nuclear bombast, it gives Florence three big moments to impress: “Nobody’s Side,” “Someone Else’s Story” and her duet with Svetlana, “I Know Him So Well.” (Her other big solo, “Heaven Help My Heart,” is a dud.) Michele sings them loudly. Tveit tests the upper limits of his voice in the mommy-didn’t-love-me screamer “Pity the Child,” and it passes with flying colors; he also gets put through his paces, and into his pants, in the flashy staging of “One Night in Bangkok,” when he is surrounded by half-naked chorus dancers evoking the fleshpots of Southeast Asia. (Those dancers are otherwise often stuck in identical boxy suits, standing and singing in V formations like a flock of grey geese, but Lorin Lotarro’s choreography lets them shine like neon in this sequence.)
Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Those who have seen the chameleonic Christopher in recent past roles, such as Pirelli in Sweeney Todd or Jelly Roll Morton in Jelly’s Last Jam, know that he has a voice of seemingly limitless range and acting chops to match. He proves those gifts anew as Anatoly, whom he imbues with compelling intensity and interiority; his Act I finale, “Anthem,” is particularly powerful, even though in 40 years Tim Rice still hasn’t gotten around to fixing what may well be the worst line he has ever written. “And you ask me why I love her / Through wars, death and despair,” Anatoly sings of Mother Russia. “She is the constant, we who don’t care.” End of sentence. “We who don’t care” isn’t just bad writing; it is literal nonsense. (My guess is that it was a dummy lyric, perhaps by the Swedes, that no one bothered changing.) At any rate: Christopher is not yet as well-known as his co-stars, but this performance may help change that; audiences who see him in Chess are unlikely to forget him.
Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
All of the above might make for an entertaining evening if Chess were just a concert, which unfortunately it is not, despite Mayer’s concert-style staging: the orchestra is onstage, with minimal sets (by David Rockwell and video designer Peter Nigrini) but maximal lighting and sound (by Kevin Adams and John Shivers, respectively). The problems with Danny Strong’s new book present themselves instantly in the obnoxious form of the Arbiter (Bryce Pinkham), whose smarmy metatheatrical narration, when it isn’t restating the obvious, often seems to be making fun of the rest of the show. (“In case you can’t tell from this very peppy and delightful song, we are now in Italy for the world chess championship, where the deranged narcissist will battle the sad and suicidal challenger for the title.”) Though never welcome, and usually shouty, this narrator is at his absolute worst when he strains for humor: “So the Americans and the Russians team up to defeat [Freddie], an attempted partnership so unusual it wouldn’t be seen again for many decades until RFK Jr attempted to team up with the worm in his brain.” Reader, I cringed.
Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
But that’s just the start. Strong’s book also makes a hash of all of the romantic relationships, and several songs have been moved to places where they don’t make sense. Freddie’s bad behavior is written off as bipolar disorder; Florence is a charmless pill on whom the skills Michele demonstrated in Funny Girl are wasted. The skulduggery of KGB heavy Molokov (Bradley Dean) and CIA creep Walter (Sean Allan Krill) is woefully unconvincing, and the stakes of the chess matches have been escalated to a ludicrous degree: We are now asked to believe that the wrong outcome could lead to, in Act I, the failure of the SALT II arms-reduction treaty and, in Act II, full-scale armageddon. (Even crazier: These threats turn out to be empty; as a plot device, they manage to be simultaneously far too heavy and completely weightless.) Despite all the narration, the plot remains highly confusing, and the show’s climax is a multicharacter pileup that frankly defies comprehension.
Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Most of Chess is sung, which is a mercy, because the dialogue is some of the corniest I’ve heard on a Broadway stage. For instance: It is revealed that the Soviets murdered the previous Grandmaster who disappointed them—with a poisoned shoe spike, one assumes, like Kronsteen in From Russia with Love–and Anatoly could be next. Molokov: “Boris Ivanovich disgraced our nation. To an American. To that lunatic.” Anatoly: “Boris was my dearest comrade.” Molokov: “I know. And if you do not defeat the American, you risk his fate.” Or consider the interior monologues that the competitors share while playing their match. Freddie: “I was the US champion at age 11. My mother should’ve locked my chess board away. I hate chess. I hate my life. I wanna die—” Anatoly: “I wanna die. I don’t know my children or my wife. I never have. Just as my parents never knew me.” Who on earth narrates themselves this way? Who thinks in exposition?
Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
But here’s the rub: If there’s a cast recording of this production, it will probably sound damn good—or good enough, at least, to keep misleading future Broadway fans and would-be script doctors into thinking that Chess can work as an actual stage musical. This show’s fans have loved it through all of its disappointing iterations, and they will love it through every bad version to come. They are the constant. We who don’t care.
Chess. Imperial Theatre (Broadway). Music and lyrics by Benny Anderson, Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus. Book by Danny Strong. Directed by Michael Mayer. With Lea Michele, Nicholas Christopher, Aaron Tveit, Hannah Cruz, Bryce Pinkham, Bradley Dean, Sean Allan Krill. Running time: 2hrs 40mins. One intermission.
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Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
