Bryce Pinkham leads a supercharged ensemble in Chess Broadway revival (photo by Matthew Murphy)
CHESS: A COLD WAR MUSICAL
Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 3, $74-$571
chessbroadway.com
There are practically as many versions of the musical Chess as there are opening gambits in the fifteen-hundred-year-old game of intense strategy and mental acuity. With an original book by Tim Rice, music by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and lyrics by Rice and Ulvaeus, the show has gone through multiple adaptations since the release of the concept album in 1984, from concert versions to music videos to full theatrical presentations in the West End in 1986, on Broadway in 1988, and around the world, attracting major directors (Trevor Nunn, Des McAnuff, Jim Sharman, Rob Marshall) and actors (Josh Groban, Judy Kuhn, Raúl Esparza, Carolee Carmello), featuring significantly changed books (by Richard Nelson, Robert Coe, and Rice himself, several times) involving song swaps and deletions and major plot alterations, often due to shifting world politics, primarily between Russia/the Soviet Union and the United States.
The current Broadway production, scheduled to continue through May 3 at the Imperial Theatre, where it’s breaking house box-office records, is the first iteration I’ve seen, and I found it to be a ton more exciting than watching, well, a chess match. Tony-winning director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, American Idiot) has teamed up with Emmy-winning film and television writer, actor, and director Danny Strong, making his Broadway debut, to reimagine the show, and it’s a major triumph filled with clever and insightful moves, despite occasionally delving into soapy melodrama, while not overplaying the cold war connections between the 1980s and today.
“Nineteen seventy-nine. The entire world is on high alert, trapped in a never ending confrontation between two opposing ideologies: communism and democracy,” the Arbiter (Bryce Pinkham), a kind of narrator and referee who oversees the proceedings, announces at the start. The ensemble belts out, “No one can deny that these are difficult times,” and the Arbiter responds, “It’s the US vs. USSR / Yet we more or less are / To our credit putting all that aside / We have swallowed our pride. . . . / No one’s way of life is threatened / by a flop.” The ensemble adds, “But we’re gonna smash their bastard / Make him wanna change his name / Take him to the cleaners and devastate him / Wipe him out, humiliate him / We don’t want the whole world saying / ‘They can’t even win a game!’ We have never reckoned on coming in second / There’s no use in losin’.”
Just in case you’re not already considering how the plot aligns with the foreign policy of President Donald Trump compared to that of Ronald Reagan, who was commander-in-chief when the show was written, the American chess master is named Freddie Trumper (Aaron Tveit), who is in love with his second, the beautiful theoretician Florence Vassy (Lea Michele). They are preparing for a major match against the brilliant Anatoly Sergievsky (Nicholas Christopher), whose handler is the devious Alexander Molokov (Bradley Dean). Molokov is quick to remind Anatoly what happened to the previous Soviet champion who lost to an American, but Anatoly tells him, “I do not fear sharing the same fate as Boris Ivanovich. The State cannot execute a man that is already dead.” But Molokov is relentless in his defense of his country, later using Anatoly’s estranged wife, Svetlana (Hannah Cruz), against him.
As the players travel to Merano, Stockholm, and, most famously, Thailand, where they spend a memorable night in Bangkok, relationships come together and fall apart, loyalty is tested, and the SALT II treaty is hotly debated as the KGB and the CIA fight to assert their prominence, with the game of chess as its centerpiece.
Freddie Trumper (Aaron Tveit) and Florence Vassy (Lea Michele) have a complicated personal and professional relationship in Chess (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Inspired in part by the famous 1972 world championship between American Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union held in Reykjavík, Iceland, which was seen as a microcosm of the ongoing battle between the US and the USSR, Chess is a thrilling evening of theater, highlighted by Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Ohio State Murders), who serves as an engaging ringleader to the proceedings, addressing the audience directly and including playful contemporary references. He is often accompanied by a terrifically talented ensemble performing Lorin Latarro’s dazzling choreography; the singers and dancers are like a glorious symphony that makes you instantly forget the book’s occasional meanderings and messiness.
The orchestra is spread across David Rockwell’s glittering multilevel set, which boasts columns of chess pieces and live and archival video footage by Peter Nigrini. The costumes, by Tom Broecker, glitter as well, particularly for the ensemble, with flashy lighting by Kevin Adams and blasting sound by John Shivers.
Yes, there are too many songs, Freddie’s transition to being an announcer is annoying, the love triangle is messy, the politics are oversimplified, and the ballads are histrionic, but Mayer and Strong keep the actual chess to a minimum, and every time the show threatens to give in to the lowest common denominator, Pinkham and the ensemble swoop in to rescue it as the endgame approaches.
This Chess is certainly no flop.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]