Over the years, “Chess” has acquired this reputation as a musical with a great score, by Tim Rice and ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, that has been cursed by Rice’s problematic book. For the show’s 1988 Broadway premiere, Richard Nelson rewrote that story about an American chess champion who competes against a Russian chess champion during the Cold War. Nelson’s rewrites didn’t solve all the narrative problems, and the show closed after a couple of months on Broadway.
Danny Strong has rewritten that book for the first Broadway revival of “Chess,” which opened Sunday at the Imperial Theatre. Lovers of ABBA may continue to think the score’s great. For the rest of us, the musical features a couple of treacly sweet love songs and a slew of ponderous anthems and percussive dirges driven by propulsive rhythms. Audial exhaustion sets in about halfway through act one.
As for Strong’s new book, it’s even more confusing than Nelson’s rewrite, which never quite made sense of the story’s love triangle – or the show’s chess metaphor regarding the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. blowing each other up.
Musicals are fueled by romance, and the most serious narrative problem with this newly retooled “Chess” is the love affair between American chess champ Freddie (Aaron Tveit) and his Hungarian immigrant girlfriend Florence (Lea Michele) who leaves him for Soviet chess champ Anatoly (Nicholas Christopher). In both Nelson’s book and Strong’s, Anatoly is a robot designed from childhood to be a chess genius. Apparently, Anatoly is attractive to Florence simply because he’s not her current boyfriend, Freddie, who’s beset with emotional problems. Nelson’s book envisioned him as a sort of pampered rock star who threw tantrums, especially at chess matches. During one such contest, he thinks the Soviets are sending Anatoly messages through his yogurt.
Strong’s book gets rid of the Oikos reference. Now, Freddie freaks out simply because he’s bipolar and off his meds. Aaron Tveit does not play Freddie as a spoiled brat. He plays him as someone who’s very emotional disturbed and desperately needs help. Tveit, a Tony winner for “Moulin Rouge,” delivers his best stage performance to date and emerges here as the only sympathetic character.
Lea Michele, on the other hand, exudes only defiance and resentment. She’s pissed off about something from the get-go and we never learn what’s making her so edgy – except for the fact that in today’s musicals female characters must show strength whatever the cost to the love story. Besides being Freddie’s girlfriend, she’s his “second,” someone who helps the chess player prepare for a match. Maybe Florence resents not being the star player, and Michele certainly makes the case for hogging the spotlight.
As performed here, Florence’s leaving Freddie is less an escape from a bad relationship than an abandonment of someone in need. That’s quite a love story. To make Florence even less sympathetic, Anatoly has a wife and kids back in the Soviet Union. He says it was a politically arranged marriage; his spouse (Hannah Cruz) says otherwise. And it’s not entirely clear from Strong’s book, or the performances, which character we’re supposed to believe. But to take the wife’s side for a moment, Anatoly does have kids and no one can blame that on the KGB.
Long before the end of act one, it doesn’t matter which man Florence loves or whether she’ll be deported back to Hungary or Siberia. For the record, Judy Kuhn in the original Broadway production made this character very appealing and vulnerable, a quality that today’s musical theater forbids its women to be. Even Tom Broecker’s costumes work to turn Michele’s Florence into an uncaring diva. For most of act two, she’s dons a white gown-caftan, the kind of outfit Maria Callas might have worn on an Onassis yacht.
The very good news: the three leads are vocally super-strong. Sometimes too strong. Nicholas Christopher likes to hold a note until the audience breaks into applause. He should go into a Longest Held Note Contest with Joshua Henry over at “Ragtime.”
There’s a metaphor running around in “Chess” that somehow the game of chess is the same game the U.S. and U.S.S.R. played with each other during the Cold War. This thematic comparison has no resonance, and it doesn’t help that Strong’s book often has the show’s narrator poking fun at it. This “arbiter” is played by Bryce Pinkham (wonderful in “The Gentlemen’s Guide to Love & Murder” and other shows), and as narrators go, there have been Emcees in “Cabaret” who have exhibited more charm, less sleaziness. Every line is shouted, every lame joke winked at. Then again, Pinkham can’t be blamed for having to mention the worm in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain. Yes, I also did not understand that reference in a show about the Cold War.
Michael Mayer directs “Chess” as a concert performance, with the orchestra placed in view on the sleek set designed by David Rockwell. There is some dancing, choreography by Lorin Latarro. Act two opens with the number “One Night in Bangkok” in which the dancers throw off their business suits and strip down to their undies. It’s great, tacky fun — right up there with the Times Square dancing Muppets from this year’s worst Broadway musical, “Boop.”
