“Chess” at the Imperial Theatre (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
At the height of the pandemic, when everyone seemed to be binging The Queen’s Gambit, a friend succinctly expressed why she wouldn’t be watching it herself in a one-line text: “You couldn’t pay me to care about chess.” I’m forced to report that, despite growing up with Benny Andersson, Bjӧrn Ulvaeus, and Tim Rice’s fabulously kitschy and melodramatic score in my ears, I agree with that sentiment as it pertains to the starry, empty, and sometimes hilariously campy Broadway revival of the 1980s megaflop Chess.
Sure, it’s stirring to hear the talented trio of Nicholas Christopher, Lea Michele, and Aaron Tveit belt legendary showtunes like “Anthem,” “Nobody’s Side,” and “Pity the Child” with reckless abandon. You might wonder how they can get through a random two-show day without incurring permanent vocal damage, but in the moment you’ll feel your pulse quicken with each ascending octave. And there’s a superficial thrill to Michael Mayer’s high-gloss staging, which turns the stage of the Imperial Theatre (where the musical had its Broadway premiere 37 years ago) into a garish, strobing arena.
But as one character perceptively sings: “Each game of chess means there’s one less variation left to be played.” Each production too. Mayer and his collaborator Danny Strong, who supplied a new libretto that reframes the material as an intentional camp artifact, seem intent on making multiple moves: they present Chess simultaneously as a deathly serious commentary on geopolitics and a frivolous piece of silly fluff. It’s a primer on the once and future state of US-Russian diplomatic relations and an unabashedly sexed-up soap opera. It’s John le Carré and Danielle Steel.
It’s also, at the end of the day, about chess—a subject that multiple belted Fs and Gs couldn’t make interesting, at least to this viewer.
In perhaps the silliest possible choice, Mayer and Strong reframe the character of The Arbiter (Bryce Pinkham) as an omniscient narrator stalking the proceedings and offering arch commentary that winks at the current moment a bit too self-consciously. (At one point, he describes a character’s actions as occurring “with a reckless abandon that would be seen again many decades later when Joe Biden decided to run for re-election.” Eyeroll.) The conceit, like Pinkham’s performance, is flashy and annoying, and not helped by a shrieking chorus who are costumed (by Tom Broecker) in matching gray suits that make them look like waiters at Le Bernardin.
The Arbiter fills the audience in on the tortured love triangle between Anatoly Sergievsky (Christopher), Freddie Trumper (Tveit), and Florence Massy (Michele), as well as how their erotic connections are manipulated by state actors from their respective countries: the nefarious KGB agent Alexander Molokov (Bradley Dean) and his wily CIA counterpart Walter de Courcey (Sean Allan Krill).
The heavy reliance on narration frees the principals from the need to act, and they largely comply. Each chooses one note and plays it relentlessly. Christopher, a brilliant singer, plays tortured and suicidal by acting dour. Although Michele can cry on cue, she misses the vulnerability beneath Florence’s bluster. And Tveit seems far too genial to project Freddie’s arrogance—or his crippling bipolar disorder.
The proceedings receive a shot in the arm in the second act, when Hannah Cruz arrives. Portraying Anatoly’s estranged wife Svetlana, Cruz comes closest to convincing the audience they’re watching a real person processing real emotions. She delivers the newly added solo “He Is a Man, He Is a Child” to the rafters, but more importantly, she uses the song to tragically communicate her doomed relationship to her husband, who by that point has defected to England. Cruz gives the kind of show-stopping performance that Featured Actress Tony Awards are made of.
The pedant in me wants to point out that Svetlana’s surname would be Sergievskya—not Sergievsky, as she’s called several times in the show. But somehow no one associated with the production catching that blunder speaks to the creative team’s overall understanding of Russian culture.
The physical production simultaneously looks lavish and cheap, with David Rockwell supplying what is essentially a concert platform, garishly lit by Kevin Adams. Perhaps it would have been more satisfying to present this material as a true concert, where the viewers could bask in the pleasure of the music without pretending to care about the characters and their circumstances. Instead, what stands in for dramaturgy includes shockingly cheesy projection designs by Peter Nigrini, complete with a cartoonish rendering of St. Basil’s Cathedral meant to signify Anatoly’s eternal connection to Russia.
The combination of a starry cast and a cultural curiosity will likely ensure a sell-out for months. Like other flops of its era recently revived, Chess seems on the road to redemption, at least at the box office. But nothing can change the fact that this production treats its characters as pawns rather than kings and queens.
