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.
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).
