Obsessing Over ‘Chess’

Each game of chess / Means there’s one less / Variation left to be played. 

So begins the opening number of the pop-rock musical Chess. At least, it used to. Each new production of the famously troubled show, it seems, means one less variation left to be staged. 

There have been a ton of them. The musical — with a score by ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and lyrics by Tim Rice, fresh from his partnerships with Andrew Lloyd Webber — revolves around the Cold War rivalry between a brash, Bobby Fisher-style American chess star and his stern Soviet rival. After debuting as a concept album, the show opened on the London’s stage in 1986, and became a major hit. But its somewhat muddled book was rewritten (by playwright Richard Nelson) for its 1988 transfer to Broadway, where the show got only mixed reviews and closed after just two months.   

Ever since, theater people have been trying fix Chess. Various revivals, international productions, and concert versions (including a 2018 English National Opera production, which I caught on a London trip and loved) have done more tinkering, in an effort to better showcase what is — to my ear, and that of many fellow Chess obsessives — perhaps the greatest of all pop-rock musical scores.

Now Chess is back, in its first Broadway revival, with its book rewritten yet again (by Danny Strong, writer-creator of the TV series Dopesick), and directed by Broadway vet Michael Mayer. Alas, it strikes me as more of a regression than an improvement.  

One thing that’s missing from the new revival is, well, chess. That opening number, which introduces the game and its legendary origins, has been truncated and buried somewhere in the middle of the show. We barely even see a chess board; during the two big matches that frame the action, the players don’t hover over their boards or move pieces, but simply announce their moves (“pawn to D4”) face-front to the audience. Can’t anybody here play this game? 

Then there’s the problem — at least the creative team saw it as a problem — of making a show set in the Cold War ‘80s seem relevant to contemporary theatergoers. The inelegant solution is to convert The Arbiter (a minor character in the original) into the show’s narrator: explaining the Cold War background, commenting on the action, and even throwing in jokey contemporary references. In some cases this is understandable; somebody, I guess, needs to explain that the American chess star’s name, Freddie Trumper, is just an odd coincidence. Others are gratuitous and dumb — jokes about Joe Biden’s ill-fated reelection bid, say, or RFK Jr.’s brain worm.

What’s more, the central storyline — a love triangle involving Freddie’s girlfriend and chess adviser, Florence, who leaves him for his Soviet rival — is now encased in an elaborate, behind-the-scenes diplomatic plot to fix the match, so as not to derail negotiations over the SALT II arms-control treaty. This not only feels contrived, but pushes the show’s never-very-convincing love story even further into the background, making it near impossible for the capable stars (Aaron Tveit as Freddie, Nicholas Christopher as Anatoly, and Lea Michele as Florence) to generate any real chemistry. 

And yet, they can sing, and it’s the music that makes this or any version of Chess worth seeing.  No musical of the rock era has such a surfeit of melodies, moods, and stylistic surprises— from pretty, astringent love songs (“I Know Him So Well,” “Someone Else’s Story”), to passionate, rock-infused cries of angst; from delicate, faux-baroque quartets, to one of Broadway’s great disco numbers (and the show’s one chart-topping hit), “One Night in Bangkok.” 

Rice is not everyone’s favorite lyricist; he can be clunky and verbose, sloppy with rhymes and meter. But few lyricists have his ambition, or his ability to pack so much narrative, emotion and observation into tight spaces. Take, for just a random example, Anatoly’s confession of mid-career crisis, in the quiet buildup to his shattering cri-de-couer, “Where I Want To Be”: “Once I had dreams/Now they’re obsessions/Hopes became needs/Lovers possessions.” Parse that one, Sondheim fans.  

It all comes to a propulsive high point in final chess match, with its round-robin of crashing, crescendoing motifs, building to an operatic, near-orgasmic climax.  The number, unfortunately, loses some impact in the new production, since the match is no longer between Freddie and his Soviet foe, but between Anatoly, now a defector to the West, and a faceless Russian opponent — in a plot twist too complicated to care about. Still, it’s an 11 o’clock number like none other; it gives me chills every time I hear it.   

And Chess is a musical like no other: alternately brilliant and frustrating, but always fascinating. When someone takes another shot at it, I’ll be there.