Chess, which began its life as an early 1980s concept album, has always been an unwieldy stage project — a blend of some of ABBA’s best music with an overly convoluted story (by frequent Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborator Tim Rice) about the Cold War as filtered through a chess tournament between grandmasters from the U.S. and the USSR. The original 1988 Broadway production — which ran 3 hours, 15 minutes and closed after two months — was a notorious flop despite a score that include pop hits like “One Night in Bangkok.” The show has undergone numerous revisions and updates over the years, but it has mostly lived on as a concert vehicle to deliver its biggest strength: the pop earworms written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus (with lyrical assistance by Rice).
Michael Mayer’s new Broadway revival leans into the concert-piece approach, creating a souped-up version of an Encores! production that places the tight 21-member orchestra on upstage risers and dispenses with realistic sets for more stylized visuals by David Rockwell and video designer Peter Nigrini (as well as Kevin Adams’ sharp lighting) that create an atmosphere suggesting separate locations without pinpointing anything too literally. The approach centers the amazing score, full of pop hooks and Lloyd Webber-style operetta numbers, while placing the book scenes in a kind of nether zone that reinforces how much they are merely a weigh station between production numbers.
Most of those songs are also staged concert style, with the stars standing downstage center and belting to the audience rather than interacting with anyone else on stage. That’s probably just as well since the leads all sound terrific — and the story is mostly nonsense. Aaron Tveit plays the arrogant, hot-headed American Freddie Trumper, who’s pitted against the taciturn Russian Anatoly Sergievsky (Nicholas Christopher), a suicidal type whose death wish may be fulfilled by his countrymen since they “disappeared” a previous grandmaster who lost to Trumper. Completing the love triangle is a Hungarian-born chess prodigy named Florence Vassy (Lea Michele), who serves as Trumper’s second/trainer as well as his lover — but also had a fling with Anatoly several years before that has the potential of reigniting.
The main contribution of new book writer Danny Strong (creator of Empire and screenwriter of Recount and Game Change) is to elevate the tournament arbiter into a full-fledged, fourth-wall-busting narrator — played by Bryce Pinkham with a reptilian energy. Pinkham fills in Cold War history for theatergoers too young to have lived through the era, emphasizing how the KGB and CIA often collaborated to give an edge to the Russian in the name of some non-chess diplomatic endeavor. He also offers a running commentary on his co-stars and their performance as if he were live-tweeting the show. Ahead of his own solo number, he announces, “The moment has arrived where I transform from humble narrator to the newest player in our Cold War musical. Which yes, means I’m going to sing. And yes, I’m going to crush it.” Pinkham works hard to reframe the show but he’s saddled with some groaners, including anachronistic references to Joe Biden and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s brainworm that are cringeworthily irrelevant.
The problem, one of many in this revival, is that Pinkham’s narrator overshadows the story’s designated arrogant jerk — Freddie Trumper (a detail that prompts Pinkham to remind us that “this show was originally written in 1984”). Granted, Freddie is given a bit of a compensating backstory — he’s bipolar and his tendency toward outrageous outbursts and self-sabotage tend to happen when he’s off his meds. But the plot requires that Freddie be repellent enough to drive Florence into the arms of her former fling Anatoly, which she does by the end of Act 1.
The melodrama never quite works, in part because Michele seems more interested in belting her soulful pop solos — which she does with considerable skill and a crystalline tone — than in manifesting the conflicts in a woman torn between two loves of vastly different public personas. Even the Act 2 introduction of Anatoly’s estranged wife, Svetlana (an affecting but underutilized Hannah Cruz), who rightly fears for herself and her family should Anatoly either lose his next tournament or defect with his new Western lover, fails to ground the show in an emotional conflict that feels real. Michele and Cruz blend beautifully in their dueling diva duet, “I Know Him So Well,” but the number is more of a musical highlight than a dramatic one.
Tveit, with his floppy bangs, brings a boyish quality to the Ugly American Freddy, and gamely leads the second act opener, “One Night in Bangkok,” a rap-inflected celebration of hedonism that is the show’s most recognizable song but also a complete non sequitur in terms of the story. Mayer and choreographer Lorin Latarro stage “Bangkok” as a period throwback, with coordinated dance moves that recall an 1980s music video and female chorus members stripping to their skivvies (oddly, the male ensemble members stay in their suit pants and suspenders and some even keep their dress shirts).
Christopher, best known as George Washington in Hamilton, showcases his velvety rich baritone on a series of songs, and notably sustains the final note of his Act 2 mid-match solo so long that you half suspect the stage crew will come out and remind him to finish so they can go home. He’s a real standout in a production full of vocal powerhouses, and he also manages to inject a depth of feeling in a character whose most identified by his placidity.
Indeed, the music sounds magnificent, thanks to John Shivers’ sound design and Anders Eljas’ lush orchestrations. The addition of strings, of horns, the volume and depth of the sound produced, will further embed many of these songs into your head for days and weeks to come. And while this revival may not entirely work as a book musical, it succeeds grandly as a glorified staged concert showcasing some of ABBA’s most infectious music. Perhaps the best we can hope out of Chess is a draw. ★★★☆☆
CHESS
Imperial Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through May 3 for $84 to $451
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