Remembering "Chess" on Broadway

Recently I blogged about a failed Broadway musical called Teddy & Alice. It ran for about two months in late 1987 and early 1988 and has been forgotten and never revived since. Another show that also had a brief run around that time has had a more interesting afterlife -- Chess.

Chess was the brainchild of the musical savant Tim Rice (former partner of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the scribes of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita) who wrote it with Bjorn Ulvaeus, the genius who wrote most of ABBA's big hit songs. The concept of Chess was certainly of its time: set in the depths of the 1980s Cold War, it's about American and Soviet chess masters, facing each other down in world-wide competitions, with money, women, and international politics getting in their way. 

Summarizing the plot is hard because originally the musical started out as a concept album in 1984 and, once staged, apparently the 1986 London stage show in the West End had a different story than the 1988 Broadway version. The plot was constantly being re-written and revised. In its original previews on Broadway in 1988, Chess had running time of 4 hours and then was cut-down to 3 hours 15 minutes when it finally opened in late April. Needless to say the length made it less than appealing to ticket-buyers. Chess also failed quickly because it cost a fortune to stage, full of fancy lighting and special effects and moving stages. It needed to gross a ton of money each week to stay afloat -- and didn't. The 1980s was the era of spectacle musicals like Starlight Express that aimed to dazzle the auidences' eyes as much as satisfy their ears. Chess was another entry in this genre that has mostly faded away -- people just didn't want to spend their time seeing a show of German opera-like legnth that assaulted their senses all night long. 

The reviews in London in '86 had been mixed but the reviews in NYC in 1988 were scathing -- Frank Rich in the Times said it had an "ostensible story ... the evening has the threatrical consistency of quicksand", and that the show just hammers home the analogy that the world is basically one big chess game and we are all its pawns. The show-stopping song is called "Nobody's Side" where the heroic lady chessmaster manager, who works for the American player but is in love with the Russian player (c'est la guerre!), croons away "And when he gives me reasons/To justify each move ... Everbody's playing the games/But nobody's rules are the same/Nobody's on nobody's side."

Ya' dig?

Some other deep meaning, powerful lyrics: "I cross over borders but I'm still there now ... Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart/My land's only borders lie around my heart." 

Huh? (Still, you get chills when you actually hear it sung.)

In the 30+ years since Chess bombed on Broadway, it has actually had a rich afterlife with revivals and "concert musicals" done around the world. In 2009 I saw a concert version on TV that had been recorded in London in 2008, featuring Idina Menzel, Josh Groban and Adam Pascal from Rent. They were brilliant but my impression, even from this version, was that while the show had some powerful, beautiful, really great songs, the story was a confusing boring mess. 

I can't resist: musically, Chess is great; plotwise, Chess is ... a mess!

So far Chess has never been revived on Broadway -- besides its story problems, the show became immeadiately and painfully dated in the 1990s when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Maybe one day it'll come back to Broadway, if the plot can be brought under control and if there is interest in a show about something that clearly is now a historical era.

And it does have some great songs that stand the test of time so, in many ways, Chess will continue playing (haha get it?) for decades to come.  

P.S. The big opening song to the second act, "One Night in Bangkok" was actually turned into a music video that got some play on MTV and as a radio single. That was always the problem with the show -- it was a bunch of singles strung together to tell some kind of story ... that no one understands to this day.