Chess The Musical is a Blunder (??)

     When the Broadway moguls decided to revive the musical Chess, I was practically giddy with anticipation. I dropped enough hints throughout the holiday season that I fully expected to find show tickets stuffed in my Christmas stocking("Chess" is right there in the title after all. I'm not a complicated man to shop for -- and not to mention, I was a very good boy that year =)). Well, it wasn't a Christmas gift exactly but rather a Valentine’s Day present when my girlfriend and I headed to the Imperial Theater with high hopes of witnessing another riveting Broadway production. We had heard nothing but good things from everyone who had already seen this revival and it seemed as though all the critics were positive on it as well.

     That's why it was even more shocking that, much to our disbelief, by the time the house lights came up for intermission, my girlfriend and I turned to each other, admitting that we were absolutely... BORED TO TEARS! At first, we were nervous about each other's reactions. Everyone in the audience seemed to be having a good time. They were laughing when they were supposed to laugh, they cheered like fangirls every time a new cast member was introduced as if they were the fifth member of The Beatles having just landed in America, and they clapped along to the beat of every song. It's tough to have to look at someone and seem ungrateful for the gift or simply admit that they are not having a good time; but it was both of us! So what was our problem? Why was everybody having the time of their life while we were contemplating sneaking out during intermission? Well, my main gripes can be summed up as --

1. Lackluster production design

2. Shoddy performances

3. Wonky story/writing

4. And finally, the chess, and how there isn't any!

     But first, let's talk about the history of this production and how we got to where we are today.

A Brief History of Chess... The Musical

     Chess has an unusual history as it was born from a collaboration between Tim Rice and the male half of the famous Swedish Pop band ABBA. Rice is an English songwriter and before Chess made its debut in 1984, he broke out onto the scene when he wrote the book and lyrics for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, followed up by Jesus Christ Superstar. ABBA became a household name after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden. 

     Just two years before that Eurovision Contest was the 1972 Match of the Century between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Like many people, Rice became fixated on the match and saw it as a perfect metaphor for the Cold War. The world champion American character, Freddie Trumper, is a direct and aggressive stand-in for Fischer himself. The Soviet challenger, Anatoly Sergievsky, functions more as the Spassky or Karpov type. Either way, the Soviet's blend of stoicism and technical precision is a clear characteristic of the legendary Russian Chess School. 

     Before Chess ever hit the stage, it was a concept album, and it's where the hit "One Night in Bangkok" came from. The album was a massive success, reaching Top Ten status in multiple countries and was number one in their native country of Sweden for seven weeks. The show premiered in the West End just two years later in 1986, at the Prince Edward Theatre. It's famous for being a technical marvel on a massive scale. Directed by Trevor Nunn (fresh off Cats and Les Misérables), Chess turned into a mega-musical and became iconic for its tilting LED chessboard floor. It signified that the characters were pawns in this global game, and the literal sloping dramtaized the shifting power dynamics. 

     The London production was a hit and ran for three years and set the bar high for any future revivals. This was evident in the 1988 Broadway adaptation, which was a notorious flop. Like a bad Hollywood blockbuster, the remake had a heavy-handed plot and more didactic dialogue that beats you over the head with its ideas. The show closed after only a measly two months. 

What Went Right    

     Now that we're all caught up, I'd like to actually start my review with what I DID like, as the entire play wasn't all for naught. 

1. "One Night in Bangkok" - Throughout the entire first act, the stage was cluttered with extras relegated to the fringes of the frame, somehow appearing both bored and radiating BIG Broadway energy all at the same time. At first, they looked silly as they were just aimless bodies occupying space simply to mask the emptiness of an expressionless stage. 

     It wasn't until after an intermission spent questioning our own sanity that we finally got something that justified those substantial Theater District ticket prices. The once-inert ensemble finally found room to play, stripping down to their risqué underwear for an R-rated acro-ballet. Seeing the sheer athleticism and dancing chops from these performers finally revealed their justification for being up on a Broadway stage. For five minutes, we were treated to an energetic, neon-drenched fever dream - a blur of New Wave Synth-Pop and hedonism fueled by booze, drugs, and a half-naked, high-energy cast. 

     I had hoped this jolt of Disco-Funk energy was a precursor to a much better second half - a sort of reverse Wicked, if you will. Unfortunately, the production did not maintain that pace, and any enjoyment I might have had for this musical essentially ended when that song did. Regardless, this interpretation of "One Night in Bangkok" is easily the best version of the track since Mike Tyson's epic rendition in Todd Phillips's The Hangover Part II. 

2. Chess Easter Eggs - The play wasn't COMPLETELY void of chess, even if there wasn't a single chessboard. There's actually a catalogue of historical references that actually happened, no matter how ridiculous they sound. Despite how flat I thought the characters are, they are undoubtedly rooted in real chess lore (even if they are just rattled off in a desperate attempt at world-building in lieu of actual character development). 

     A. Acute Hearing - In this production, Freddie's acute hearing is portrayed as a form of sensory overload. It shows his mental instability and that he is a genius on the verge of a mental breakdown. There's actually a strong correlation between so-called geniuses and acute hearing. The idea is that divergent thinking requires such a broad focus. The upside is that you recognize patterns that others don't. The downside being that you can't turn it off. Any off in the distance sound that a non-divergent thinker would dispose of as insignificant is instead something else that is just processed as a neurodivergent. Other giants in their fields who were acuter hearers were Charles Darwin, Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust, the latter who famously lined his bedroom with cork because he couldn't stand the sound of the world. 

     This trait is a direct lift from Bobby Fischer and the 1972 Match of the Century in Reykjavik. Fischer famously refused to play game two of the match because he claimed that the constant hum of the TV cameras was a distraction, even if he was the only one who could hear it. To him, these weren't just distractions, however, but instead a possible assault on his senses that the Soviets coordinated to break his concentration. 

     B. The Hypnotist - Speaking of breaks in one's concentration! To further emphasize Trumper's paranoia, the musical makes a passing note about a hypnotist and having to wear sunglasses. This is a clear reference to the 1978 World Championship Match between Victor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov. Korchnoi was convinced that a member of Karpov's team was planted in the front row to hypnotize him and disrupt his thoughts. To thwart the "evil stare" of this hired hypnotist, Korchnoi made a prophylactic move and came to the board with heavily mirrored sunglasses to shield his eyes and so that any telepathic transmissions would reflect off him and back to its preternatural perpetrator.  

     C. The Grandmaster Draw - There's a reason why in the first rounds of the Candidates Tournament, the pairings must pit countryman against countryman. This avoids the possibility of any collusion in the later, more crucial rounds. In this revival, match-fixing is shown as cold and bureaucratic. These plot machinations are the engine that drives the entire second act of the play, with several scenes of shady backroom dealings. The so-called "Soviet Chess School" is portrayed as a monolithic entity where any given player serves as a "pawn" of the state. The idea is that if the Kremlin asks you to make a draw, you make a draw. If you are to lose to a more jingoistic comrade, then you must obey the order and fall on your sword. 

     The so-called "Grandmaster Draw" (and I'm not referring to players opting for the Berlin Defense) was the ultimate tool of the Soviet machine. Basically, by mathematically ensuring certain outcomes, they maintained a stranglehold on the World Championship cycle for decades. There are two famous examples of this --

          i - Zurich 1953 - On many shortlists as the greatest chess book ever written, Zurich 1953 by David Bronstein has underscored this tournament as one of the most crucial in chess history. However, years after the book's publication, Bronstein himself revealed that the Soviet delegation met on the shores of Lake Zurich to orchestrate the outcome of this tournament. Those authorities seemed terrified of the American Samuel Reshevsky, and they did everything in their power to make sure that he wouldn't challenge their own, Mikhail Botvinnik, for the World Title. All in all, all the Soviet players (perhaps with the exception of Paul Keres) would draw against each other so that they would conserve energy for when they played Reshevsky, fighting to the death to defeat him or at the very least, drain him of all his energy. 

          ii - Curacao 1962 - The Zurich example is still somewhat conspiratorial in nature, but the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curacao is a bit more cut and dry in my opinion. After a young 19-year-old Bobby Fischer finished fourth in this Round Robin, he immediately accused the Soviets - Petrosian, Keres, and Geller - of a collusion pact. All three Soviets drew every single one of their games against each other, with their matches only lasting an average of just a meager 19 moves. So while Fischer was grinding out 60-move endgames, these fellow comrades were essentially taking rest days. 

          Fischer was so incensed that he quit international chess for several years (for the first time at least). However, his outcry did have a significant impact on the tournaments to come. Instead of a formatted Round Robin, which could be exploited for collusion, FIDE switched to a knockout-style bracket for several years. No matter what delegation you represented, it was mano a mano with the best man advancing to the next round. 

     D. Going Crazy - Does chess make sane people go crazy, or keep crazy people sane? This idea is a trope as old as the game itself and is commonly played out through popular culture. Probably the first instance of this was the novella The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig. Written while the author was in exile from the Nazis, the book follows a man who is held in isolation by the Gestapo. To keep his mind from "snapping", he steals a chess manual and begins memorizing games. Naturally, he suffers a mental collapse because of it.

     This has been played out even more through the years wether it be literature like Nabokov's The Luzhin Defense (you can see my review of the film here), on the big screen like in Tobey Maguire's Pawn Sacrifice, or the latest and most culturally relevant medium, television, with the uber successful Netflix mini-series The Queen's Gambit. No matter where chess is portrayed, it is more than likely that there is a disheveled hermit character who only subsists on the 64-squares, locked in the corridors of their own mind.

What Went Wrong

1. Lackluster Production Design - If you live in the New York metropolitan area, you were once inundated with those classic local TV commercials: the ones where breathless theatergoers are being interviewed as they file out of the lobby. "The pageantry!" they would exclaim, shuffling out after a performance of Cats. Well, the Chess revival had about as much pageantry as it did actual chess - which is to say, NONE! 

     This was a staggering letdown because, historically, Chess was a technical titan. The revival, however, is anything but a spectacle. While I normally appreciate minimalist storytelling, this "set dressing" consisted of nothing more than four uncomfortable-looking sofas with red cushions. It looked as if they had just fallen off an Amazon truck in front of the theater, and the producer said, "Yeah, those should do." Ironically, The Play That Goes Wrong -a shambolic farce- would have provided a more suitable setting for a world-class chess match with its mahogany decor and wallpaper bookshelves than this sterile, reddish-orange void.  

     You sit there through the first handful of scenes thinking, "Surely the lights will dim at some point, and a team of stagehands will swap all this out for the actual setting, right?" Unfortunately, that moment never comes. If you stripped that giant, obnoxious, five-letter "CHESS" signage from the top of the stage, there would have been nothing left to anchor this set to its subject matter. Without that advertisement, I could have easily been convinced I'd walked into the wrong theater for the wrong show.  

     Red chairs aside, the band is wrapped tightly around the staircase. While I understand this arrangement desperately screams "Rock Opera", in practice, they are simply in the way of the actual play. The actors cross the platform at the top of the stairs and descend using the railing, but it's nearly impossible to buy into the psychological tension or romantic intimacy of a scene when there is a giant, floating percussionist's head dangling between the performers. Furthermore, it's hard to buy into Freddie Trumper being distracted by a muted cough in the crowd when there's an electric guitarist shredding riffs right by his side.  

     The band wasn't just a distraction; they were a physical barrier. Depending on your seat, you might not even have noticed the LED wall tucked behind the interposing band, which was behind the staircase, which was behind the chairs. The digital imaging attempted to add atmosphere, but it was so negligible that I question even mentioning it - yet, I'm going to anyway. For instance, in the Russian scenes, you can see a faint drizzle of digital snow. Honestly, I would have preferred a high school kid standing off-stage on a ladder, throwing handfuls of shredded paper; at least that's practical and shows a modicum of effort. 

     The only "innovation" was a single floating panel used to simulate a TV broadcast. Trumper does an interview, and his face is magnified onto this screen using what looks like a slapdash Snapchat filter. This trope has officially overstayed its welcome ever since Bryan Cranston starred in Network. In Network, the live close-ups served the story of the broadcast news setting and built a bridge between the live performance and the production studio set-dressing. Here, the floating panel felt contrived, a knock-off, and a lazy shortcut for exposition. 

     With LED walls, you have the power to do virtually anything: ticking clocks, surveillance footage, or grainy newsreels that could have grounded the Cold War stakes. Instead, these walls were relegated to the status of a glorified desktop screensaver - and that's if you even noticed them. At the climax of the story, they finally attempt something when they put up a slideshow of the past World Champions. Even then, they couldn't even get that right, as I noticed they skipped over the 5th World Champion and eventual FIDE President, the Dutchman Max Euwe. I had just visited the Max Euwe Museum in Amsterdam a couple of months prior, so I was particularly on the lookout for his likeness. It is a staggering irony that a show claiming to be about the history of the "Great Immortal Game" just plain out forgets or neglects one of its most influential figures. Perhaps it's a good thing that the band and the scaffolding obfuscated the view after all. 

2. Shoddy Performances - I blame Jonathan Groff. Ever since his legendary performance in Hamilton as King George III, every stage performer feels the urge to spit whenever they are singing or to emphasize their plosives. In his latest Broadway run as Bobby Darin in Just in Time, he flippantly warned audience members, the ones paying top dollar may I add, that their front row seats were in the "splash zone" and to beware -- light heartedly refering to himself as "just in general a very wet boy." To emulate this trailblazer, it seems as though Broadway stages are now lacquered with saliva, requiring a janitor to come out during intermissions to mop the stage like a Zamboni between periods. It has become so exaggerated in my opinion that it's not too far off from that exemplary Gary Oldman cameo in Friends.

     This trend was particularly egregious when Hannah Cruz, as Anatoly's wife Svetlana, let loose a lingering loogie that dangled from her chin and dress for the remainder of an entire song. I understand that these physicalities are necessary when performing and help actors portray raw anguish, but to me, it's over-the-top, contrived, and just plain gross. Despite what Joey Tribbiani perceives to have learned in that clip with an Oscar Winner, premeditated panting and spitting do not constitute great acting. 

     I was equally unengaged by Nicholas Christopher's performance as Anatoly. Along with Cruz, their Russian accents were amateur at best -- though I would go so far as to call them downright atrocious (Cruz's especially.) My girlfriend was actually born in Georgia (the country, not the state), and she and her family are native Russian speakers. Because of this, I've been picking up the language myself and am developing a slight ear for what an authentic Russian accent sounds like. It felt like a bad stereotype, and if you don't want to take my word for it as just some dumb American who only speaks one language, take it from my girlfriend, who thought the exact same thing.  

     As for Christopher's performance choices, the theater must have been particularly cold that night because it's the only explanation for why he decided to do the show in a cringing shiver. Between the constant trembling, the bald head, and the terrible accent, I very early on latched onto the realization that he looks and sounds exactly like NoHo Hank from HBO's Barry. It is extremely hard to take a character seriously -- and I acknowledge this is a prison of my own design -- when you are actively expecting him to offer you a juice box and ask if you want to be "best friends." Once you see it, it cannot be unseen, and I admittedly had a tough time not poking fun at him from that point forward.   

     It should be pointed out that both Christopher and Cruz were nominated for Tony Awards in their respective categories for these roles, so congratulations to both of them. Clearly, my thoughts are just one man's opinion, but with no ill will towards either of them, I vehemently disagree with those nominations based on their third-rate accents alone.

3. Wonky Story/Writing - There's a major plot point where Trumper -- who has suddenly become a television journalist despite his vocal hatred for the media -- manages to snag an exclusive with Anatoly. This setup makes zero narrative sense for either character. Trumper is still spiraling through a psychological collapse, consumed by bitter resentment and public humiliation after Anatoly took both his World Championship title and Florence, the love of his life. Meanwhile, Anatoly has just defected to the West. For a high-profile Soviet defector to willingly entertain an unscripted media circus with his loose-cannon rival is a geopolitical absurdity and completely against Anatoly's best interest.

     This is so poorly constructed that even The Arbiter, played by Bryce Pinkham (who, remarkably, was also nominated for a Tony), delivers an aside to the audience along the lines of: "Yeah, we know it makes no sense for these two to be doing an interview right now, but bear with us." The crowd chuckled at this confession, but hanging a lantern on a plot-hole doesn't excuse it. If anything, it highlights lazy writing; you are essentially admitting defeat rather than doing the actual work to write yourself out of the corner you've painted your characters into. Basically, figure out a more believable way to get your characters into a room together. 

     So why does Danny Strong's revival book feel the need to concoct this improbable interview? To understand that, we have to look at the three foundational pillars this musical promises to its audience:

1. High Stakes Chess

2. A Love Triangle

3. A Cold War Thriller 

     The production only manages to deliver the third pillar, as it hurdles the low bar of unmistakably being a Cold War thriller (spies, defectors, KGB - check), but it fails dramatically in the other two departments. The promised love triangle is a complete illusion. For a romantic triangle to actually work, there needs to be sustained narrative tension and a genuine choice for Florence to make. Chess defies these genre conventions by burning through the romance at breakneck speed: Trumper throws an early temper tantrum, Anatoly swoops in, and Florence is swept off her feet before the intermission. By Act II, any semblance of a "will-they-won't-they" dynamic is completely done before it can even get started. Florence and Anatoly are a firmly committed couple, and the audience never for a second believes Trumper has a chance of winning her back. From this point forward, Freddie - a supposedly protagonist - is entirely stripped of his agency, relegated from a fierce romantic lead to a glorified errand boy used strictly as a tool for plot development. And that is exactly why we get this difficult-to-believe interview between Freddie and Anatoly. The writers desperately needed to give a sidelined Aaron Tveit (who was not nominated for a Tony) something to do, rather than allowing the plot to genuinely sprout from the narrative's themes or the characters' organic wants and needs.

     Furthermore, while Chess is undoubtedly a Cold War thriller, that doesn't mean it's a successful one. The driving force of this genre is the inability to communicate openly and honestly, striking fear and evoking paranoia about what a person's true intentions actually are. By forcing them into an artificial studio setting just to spout exposition, the scene strips away any subtext that was left for the audience to decipher on their own and completely deflates any semblance of an actual high-stakes pressure cooker.

     On top of that, there are several instances of the Arbiter making entirely ill-timed jokes. Breaking the fourth wall, he panders to the theatergoers with cheap quips about RFK Jr's brain worm, Biden running for a second term, and even stopping to explicitly call attention to the name "Trumper" by reminding us that the play was written well before the 45th and 47th president ever came to office (if it was such a big deal, they could have easily changed the name and nobody would have batted an eye). These jokes were groan-worthy and quite literally untimely; the story takes place in the 1980s, and any forced mention of current world events instantly rips you out of the era. Is it really all that different than a misplaced Starbucks cup left on the set of Game of Thrones?

     Like Spielberg's Munich and War of the Worlds -- both went into production directly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 -- creatives must justify period pieces because they have something profound to say about the current world we are living in. The historical setting is supposed be held up in front of us and act as a mirror. Instead, this show was continuously stopped dead in its tracks to explain itself, yell modern political buzzwords, and even mock its own stakes. If you aren't going to take your own story seriously, then why should we? The writing treated its audience as if we were too dumb to understand the Cold War without aggressively and didactically spelling out exactly why it's still relevant today. But by doing so, the show becomes profoundly hindered, and that message gets lost in all the noise.

4. Chess, Or The Lack Thereof - It actually started out somewhat promising. The first (of very few) semblances of chess were our two Grandmasters standing side-by-side, looking straight out into the audience as they began rattling off common opening theory. I thought this was actually a brilliant conceit and an intimate glimpse into the minds of two elite players. It was a blindfold chess game where we also had the opportunity of getting insightful internal monologues in real time. It also highlighted the fact that Grandmasters don't even need a board to play as they can scroll through entire games and calculate deep variations entirely in their heads. What we got was a sort of chess rap battle.

     I was following along perfectly for the first handful of moves (it was a Ruy Lopez if I recall), but eventually, the continuity broke -- and not because I'm just a measly Class B tournament player who's weakness is visualization. "Wait, there was no Bishop on that square? How can they capture there?" This wasn't a strategical instance of "cutting to the chase" (to use a film term); they just started spouting nonsense. And even if they were trying to condense the game, why not just use actual moves from actual variations? If there's one things actors are known for, it's for memorizing lines. 

     When this first happened, I was hoping for a Raging Bull-style visual progression. In that film, director Martin Scorsese shot every single boxing match differently -- either elongating the ring to add a distorted feeling, having a small compact ring making you feel claustrophobic or with low-key/high contrast lighting in the vein of a horror film.  

     Not implementing a similar visual technique was a missed opportunity in my book. I thought the blindfold chess was a nifty introduction before transitioning to a grand playing hall outfitted with European-style wooden pieces and glossed boards. Instead, and little did I know, this would essentially be the only chess we got. Other than a return to this blindfold presentation at the climax (a narrative technique meant to show repetition through variation, where Anatoly faces the board again after going through an emotional journey and having changed), the actual game of chess remains entirely absent. 

     This needs to be reinstated. These two blindfold scenes constitute the entirety of the chess in a Broadway musical literally titled Chess. There is essentially no chess in the titular show! Instead, we get superficial gobbledygook "chess-speak" that is so incredibly dumbed down, it's laughable for a World Championship setting. Playing d4 after 1.e4 to control the center isn't exactly pushing the bounds of opening theory.

     To take a quick aside on terminology in sports entertainment as a whole: I understand the studio note to not get too deep into the weeds and alienate a casual audience with hyper-specific jargon. But I can't stand watching a football movie where the quarterback walks into the huddle and calls "Buttonhook on two!" That's it? What's the personnel? Formation? Any other routes for the other receivers? By dumbing it down you sacrifice authenticity because no matter what you say it's going to go over the layman's head anyway. It's all just arbitrary words to an outsider so why not have dialogue that would actually be spoken by real people? ("Bronco, tight double slot right, zip-pap, 5-2-2-5 twist on Tuesday, check Tuesday!") 

     In the case of a chess match, a writer just needs to watch a single post-game interview with Fabiano Caruana or Hikaru Nakamura to see how elite, super-GMs actually analyze a position. They ramble off lighting-fast variations and provide concrete evaluations at the end. This should have been easily replicated. Audiences love characters who are good at what they do, no matter what that thing is so lean into it and portray genuine authenticity.

     But ultimately, there is little to no chess in Chess. No playing hall, no chessboards and with the exception of some trivial set decor along the fringes of the stage, there is only one single chess piece in the entire production: a cheap, plastic white king that Anatoly carries around in his pocket. It isn't even a nice wooden piece; it's one of those hollow, standard tournament plastic pieces tournament directors purchase in bulk. Its probably not even triple-weighted. Eww.

Conclusion

     All in all, they say no two productions are ever the same. There have been countless musical revivals and Shakespeare adaptations that aim to bring something fresh to a particular retelling -- after all, what's the point if you don't have your own distinct spin on the material? Perhaps i'm simply failing to meet this production of Chess on its own terms. Given the frantic, obsessive-like reactions that rang about the Imperial Theater, maybe it isn't supposed to be taken all that seriously. Maybe it's intentionally campy?

     I don't think so. And even if it was, excuse me for not thinking this show is on its way to dismantling Dr. Strangelove as a quintessential Cold War satire. The tone was far too messy and all over the place to buy into that argument. 

     Ultimately, it was a Valentine's Day to remember, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. We went in expecting some grandmaster-level preparation, but we left the theater feeling like we'd just been swindled by a hustler in Washington Square Park. The production didn't have a compelling love triangle, it featured next to no actual actual chess, and - to paraphrase a lyric from "One Night in Bangkok", it didn't even have Yul Brynner. The show sure could have used him though.