17 November 2025
This is an angry review. A very angry review. But it has not been dashed off in the white heat of anger. It has instead festered and brewed over the three weeks since I had the miserable misfortune of sitting through Chess at the Imperial Theatre (having paid $421.00 for my front orchestra seat for the privilege).
I desperately wanted to see it, for Chess to finally succeed on Broadway after flopping badly in the 1980s. And I had planned my 4-day trip around the show from the day it was announced. The actual opening night was last night, so I’ve saved my thoughts until now, to be published alongside New York critics, whose reviews were officially embargoed.
The current US producers have spent more than $20million on this production. It has a completely new book… and they have comprehensively fucked up Chess... for the second time on Broadway.
What they have perpetrated on this glorious show is nothing less than a Musical Theatre crime.
“Each game of chess
Means there’s one less
Variation left to be played
Each day got through
Means one or two
Less mistakes remain to be made”
Epilogue in Chess
Chess has a special place in the history of stage musicals. Since its birth as a concept album in 1984 (following the model of pop chart to stage success of both Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita) and the 1986 West End stage premiere, which ran for a highly respectable three years at the Prince Edward Theatre, writer Tim Rice and composers Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of the pop group ABBA, have allowed any number of producers to tinker with their show to their hearts desire, be that in spectacular concerts such as at the Royal Albert Hall or indeed full productions. Songs have been deleted, new songs added, songs given to other characters to perform, scenes dropped, scenes added, new characters introduced and in the case of this latest Broadway version, the book has been completely rewritten. So there have indeed been many, many variations of Chess.
This version arrives with a cast laden with Broadway stars: Tony Award® winner Aaron Tveit (Moulin Rouge!) as A-hole American chess champion Freddie Trumper (now suffering from bipolar rather than just being a spoilt brat “probably queer” from a broken home), Nicholas Christopher (Sweeney Todd, Hamilton) as the glacial Russian challenger Anatoly Sergievksy and Glee star Lea Michele as Florence, Freddie’s lover and chess strategist. There have been numerous video interviews featuring the stars released on social media, trumpeting the fact that the have finally solved the problems with the book for Chess. They haven’t. They have made it 100 times worse.
At its heart, Chess is a highly personal drama played out against the tense backdrop of East vs West chess tournaments around the world. The players moving around the stage, swapping partners, alliances and even countries, like chess pieces on a board. Here the new book writer, Danny Strong, has made the show more talky and less theatrical than usual. He focuses less on the emotional love triangle and fixates instead on the nuclear arms talks and political machinations that were once just the show’s background texture. Boring. Boring. Boring. And fatally, there is zero chemistry between the three stars.
I am possibly one of the greatest Chess obsessives. And I don’t believe any of this tinkering was necessary. Neither does Tim Rice (listen to his excellent podcast GET ONTO MY CLOUD – https://broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/podcasts/get-onto-my-cloud-the-tim-rice-podcast where he expounds that the best narrative was the 1984 album, and when that is sung unaltered as long as “Someone Else’s Story” is in there, too, in a concert format with a full orchestra and scores of talented soloists, the results are never less than dazzling).
I met a significant partner (we lasted almost 4 years) around the opening night of the West End production in May 1986. He drove a flash BMW that had a first prototype brick-sized mobile phone (well, it was the excessive 80s!) fitted between the front seats. The car also came with a CD player in the boot that you loaded with favourite CDs to play and the Chess concept double album, featuring Murray Head, Tommy Körberg, Elaine Paige (who would star in the West End premiere) Denis Quilley, Björn Skifs and Barbara Dickson, was on constant replay as we swanned around the country. It sounded glorious and has remained a favourite of mine over the subsequent decades.
We rushed to see the production at the Prince Edward Theatre. It was the crazy brainchild of A Chorus Line director Michael Bennett, who sadly had to withdrawn in favour of Sir Trevor Nunn when AIDS made working impossible. Phantom had its plunging chandlier, Les Mis the revolving barricade and Miss Saigon a helicopter, but Chess was dominated by a giant revolving platform on a hydraulic arm. It mesmerised me as it revolved, lifted, tilted and at times lit up like the squares of an actual chessboard or turned pure white to resemble a mountaintop for the “Mountain Duet” high above Merano, Italy. Banks of televisions on either side of the stage – they would break down regularly during the run – showed the actual moves in the chess games being played out between the lead characters and positions of the opposing super powers. It was visually and aurally breathtaking, non more so than when the ensemble dressed as ancient chess pieces moved acr0ss the board in a beautiful ballet sequence as the chess Arbiter and soloists sang about its beginnings 1,500 years ago when two princes/brothers fought for a Hindu throne. I was working in nearby Tottenham Court Road at the time and would regularly walk by the theatre at 7.25pm and buy a last minute reduced price stalls ticket to see the show for the umpteenth time. I was an uber fan.
None of this spectacle is in this latest Broadway version. It’s basically a concert with modest pieces of set including a bed appearing then disappearing as soon as they arrive.
The worst element in the stinker of a book is Bryce Pinkham’s annoying Arbiter-turned-omnipresent-commentator with anachronistic references to present-day US politics including the crass “RFK Jr attempting to team up with the worm in his brain”. He offers at the get-go: “Americans hate chess!”. So the creative team have taken almost anything to do with the game of chess out of the show called… Chess. The Russian champion (briefly) fingers a chess piece in his hand, and at another brief moment the Russian and American stand still at microphones on stands and mutter a handful of robotic chess moves – “Pawn to E6,” “Knight to F3”. And for the game of chess that’s your lot. Pinkham, straining to get cheap laughs from the audience at every turn (and succeeding), is a shouty narrator at his absolute worst with smarmy meta theatrical narration which, when it isn’t restating the obvious, makes fun of the actual show. Examples: “Yes, I know his name is ‘Trumper’ but remember this show was originally written in 1984”, “Meet CIA agent Walter de Courcey. He’s a real dick. No he is, really. He’s the only character in this musical not to get his own solo song!” and “In case you can’t tell from this very peppy and delightful song, we are now in Italy for the world chess championship, where the deranged narcissist will battle the sad and suicidal challenger for the title.” I cringed every time he opened his mouth.
I also had two sharp intakes of breath at the phrasing choices of Lea Michele in one of her big numbers. All delivered with the warmth of a cold bath. She’s as cold a performer as Siberia.
The set is minimal with the small band (I refuse to say orchestra due to the thin sound the paucity of musicians produce) located in a rising horse shoe around the action. Back projections are extremely poor (Merano looks like a blurred photo shot in front of the frosted glass of a bathroom window, and the chorus dressed in dark grey business suits apart from colourful bras and suspenders for a resolutely heterosexual Victoria’s Closet-inspired “One Night in Bangkok” (the sexiest it gets is when two chorus girls slide their fingernails inside Trumper’s tiny white boxers as he performs a reverse striptease).
“No one’s way of life is threatened by a flop,” sing the chorus in what is now the show’s opening number. The 1988 Broadway premiere of Chess, with a much-altered book by Richard Nelson, ran only two months, ironically also at the Imperial Theatre. Last week this version – to my mind an absolute travesty – took $2million at the box office in just 8 performances. Will this version, simultaneously overblown and undercooked, survive longer? Only time will tell…
