CHESS (2025 Broadway Revival) Reviews

Are these expected to drop tonight?

jacobsnchz14 said: "Are these expected to drop tonight?"

11pm according to Adam Feldman

I am gonna predict mixed with high praise for the performances and some of the design elements (lighting will be highlighted) but no forgiveness on the book. Overall it will be praised as better than the original but still not great.

AMNY: Praise for cast, not for book



Review | In ‘Chess,’ the music attacks – but the book retreats

https://www.amny.com/entertainment/broadway/review-chess-the-musical

"After the revelatory 2023 revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” which finally clarified another difficult 80s musical, there was hope that “Chess” might enjoy a similar breakthrough. This isn’t that breakthrough. But when the commentary dies down and the music takes over, the show soars, proving again why people keep trying to resurrect it.

As drama, “Chess” remains a puzzle. As a concert, though, it can be thrilling—and in this production, that’s what ultimately wins."

NYT by Vincentelli (with Sara Krulwich credited for visual images). Not a Critic's Pick.

‘Chess’ Review: At Least They Have the Music

This new revival, starring Lea Michele, Nicholas Christopher and Aaron Tveit, is a reminder why the erratic yet rewarding show has endured all these years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/theater/chess-review-lea-michele-broadway.html

"Has the yearslong collaboration between the director Michael Mayer and the screenwriter Danny Strong (“Empire”) that opened Sunday at the Imperial Theater finally found the winning move? Let’s call it a draw.

Parts of the show are absolutely thrilling and parts are flat at best, aggressively dumb at worst. At least Mayer’s production, starring Nicholas Christopher, Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit, is not a bland bore. Thinking back to Michele’s big, then bigger, then biggest “Nobody’s Side” or Christopher’s red-hot, neck-vein-bursting “Anthem,” I can feel the needle move toward the positive side of the dial."

Hollywood Reporter

‘Chess’ Theater Review: Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher Headline Conflicted Broadway Revival of Cold War Concept Musical

With music by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the 1988 show revolves around rival American and Soviet chess wizards and the woman caught between them.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/chess-theater-review-lea-michele-aaron-tveit-abba-musical-1236427952



"Jokes that yoke the time of Chess to recent headlines — RFK Jr.’s brain worm, Biden’s failed second-term bid — are awfully wheezy. (When the gags are really bad, one almost wonders if one is actually across the street watching Operation Mincemeat.) But some of the show’s Brechtian self-awareness works quite well, giving Chess a giddy shiver of the prescient or the eternal. Mayer and Strong offer a broad pop-history lesson, in which the same tensions and turmoils churn on and on in their terrible cycle throughout the decades; the only thing that’s changed are the aesthetics. Pinkham is an able and engaging docent on this musical museum tour, in which the 40-year-old core of Chess is used as an ironic vessel for Mayer and Strong’s latter-day arguments about past politics informing present nightmares.

That irony does come at a cost, though. There, keening and belting at the center of Mayer and Strong’s eyebrow-raised meta-show, are three star performers who, it seems, are just trying to do Chess for real. "

C+ from Entertainment Weekly

Chess review: The infamous Broadway flop attempts to shed its checkered past with a powerhouse cast

Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit, and Nicholas Christopher headline the Cold War musical about two warring chess champions.

https://ew.com/chess-review-infamous-broadway-flop-returns-with-lea-michele-aaron-tveit-11850388

"So put all three together and what do you get? A confounding lack of chemistry. There's no question that these three performers are capable, nor that Tony-winning director Michael Mayer knows how to guide a cast through quiet intimacy and emotional highs (Spring Awakening speaks for itself). Yet the romance between Michele and her two male leads is hollow on both ends.

And then there's the matter of the unspoken fourth lead, The Arbiter (a charming Bryce Pinkham doing his damndest to hold it all together). He functions not unlike the narration in Operation Mincemeat, the sensational production happening just a couple doors down. But that script is much tighter. Chess bogs its narrator down with needless exposition and jokes more deserving of an eye roll than a laugh.

And did I mention the show is set during the Cold War? God forbid you forget that for half a millisecond, someone will leap at the chance to remind you — be it the narrator, the dialogue, or the lyrics, you can hardly go a few minutes without hearing the words "Cold War musical" stated aloud. I half expected someone to hop on the intercom at intermission just to jog my memory. And therein lies one of the show's biggest problems."

Holdren in Vulture

The Winner Takes It All: Chess Returns to Broadway

https://www.vulture.com/article/theater-review-chess-musical-broadway-tveit-michele.html

"Grab your sleeping bags and bug spray, people. It’s time for camp. Chess is back on Broadway after 37 years, as big and weird as ever, with as much late-’80s bombast as a Claude Montana runway show, as much cheese as a charcuterie board. "

...

"For all the talk of SALT II and the Able Archer exercises—all the protestations that a single checkmate could cause nuclear armageddon—Chess is not a serious musical. Fine. Good, even! When the show is at its best, it hits levels of unironic ludicrousness that are more fun than most things on Broadway. Back in 1988 Frank Rich ripped Chess’s American premiere a new one: “The characters,” he wrote in the Times, “yell at one another to rock music.” Yes, they absolutely do. And I had a great time."

NY Daily News/Chicago Tribune

BROADWAY REVIEW: Guilty pleasure ‘Chess’ with Michele, Tveit, Christopher doesn’t miss

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/11/16/chess-broadway-review-lea-michele-aaron-tveit

"Nobody cared much about all that absurdity in London back then (snobbier Broadway was another matter) and nobody will care much now, not with three powerhouse, love-triangle voices to belt out an anthemic score packed with knockout ballads that I for one have been listening to (at high volume) for nearly 40 years: “Someone Else’s Story,” “Pity the Child,” “Heaven Help My Heart,” “I Know Him So Well.”

I mean, with Michele, she of the flawless technique and ability to make half the audience think she is singing just to them? With Tveit, all sexy hair and plaintive notes? With Christopher, all Euro-angst landing right in the middle of every thrilling note? Come on. What better way do you have in mind to pass your leisure hours? Playing board games?"

Washington Post

The wacky chess musical is back, and it’s packed with bangers

Lea Michele leads an ambitious and blaring revival of “Chess,” a famous flop of the 1980s megamusical era.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater/2025/11/16/chess-broadway-review

"Strong’s script, which combines elements from previous versions and adds more frank comedy, tries to have it both ways, poking fun at itself while turning the show’s chess face-offs into matters of nuclear war. Sean Allan Krill and Bradley Dean are both delightfully smarmy as agents with the CIA and the KGB, respectively, negotiating around the margins about which opponent needs to win to prevent Earth’s destruction.

It’s all a bit cuckoo, and would feel somewhat extraneous if there weren’t so many songs — despite those that have been cut — to fit a bevy of twists and turns. (As the plot goes increasingly off the rails in the second act, the two-hour-forty-five-minute runtime starts to feel like a slog.)

What everyone is really here for are the handful of blow-your-hair-back, 1980s-style rock ballads sung by the love-triangulated leads. Whether or not you appreciate the outrageous decibels at which they are amplified here, the bangers are built to impress, with notes held for longer than most people can count in their heads. Bring earplugs! Bring Kleenex! Prepare to succumb!"

Wall Street Journal

‘Chess’ Review: A Broadway-Musical Blunder

Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher lead a fruitlessly revamped version of the 1980s synth-pop extravaganza about the board game, a love triangle and the Cold War.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chess-review-a-broadway-musical-blunder-1d9062e9

"In one of the more ludicrous passages, Freddie and Anatoly announce their chess moves (“Pawn to C4”) while simultaneously regaling us with their miseries. Freddie: “I hate chess. I hate my life. I wanna die.” Anatoly: “I wanna die.” Neither attempts suicide by ingesting a board’s worth of chess pieces, but Freddie subsequently storms off, throwing the competition into doubt.

Mr. Strong’s book dives into the political machinations behind the chess face-off in deliberate detail—Florence, born in Communist Hungary, is threatened by Walter with deportation if she doesn’t get Freddie to lose the match. And in the second act the SALT drama is replaced by nuclear maneuvers (specifically the “Able Archer” incident, likely little known to any but historians). But these convoluted John le Carré diversions are not engaging, and the attempts to enrich the characters are clunky. After Anatoly and Florence have fallen into bed, he says: “I could never defect because I was afraid to lose the Russia in my heart. But I would leave the Soviet Union for you.” The hopeless romantic promptly does.

Which brings us to the primary, indeed only, reason to revisit this dated and fundamentally trite show: the music. Mr. Christopher is terrific as the brooding Anatoly, who after defecting sings the first-act curtain number, “Anthem,” with both plush vocalism and fiery emotion. Ms. Michele is in glorious voice, and her first-act solo, the defiant “Nobody’s Side,” is a vibrant roof-raiser. Mr. Tveit’s rich, clear tenor shines throughout. He leads the pseudo-rap number “One Night in Bangkok,” which became a pop-chart hit when the concept album was released."

Theatermania

Review: Chess Returns to Broadway With Checkmate Vocals and a Checked-Out Book

https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-chess-returns-to-broadway-with-checkmate-vocals-and-a-checked-out-book_1812218

"Chess has always been a great score in search of a good book, and writer Danny Strong believes he’s cracked the code by reframing it as a self-referential examination of Cold War-era American and Russian relations, filled with a healthy dose of humor and antipathy. He hasn’t. But it’s nice to hear the score live."

Daily Beast

‘Chess,’ Theater’s Most Notorious Strange Beast, Finally Returns

CHECKMATE

A chess rivalry, the Cold War, and a love triangle: The quintessentially ‘80s musical is back on Broadway, in all its bombast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/chess-review-theaters-most-notorious-strange-beast-finally-returns

"rather like a chess match, the show (directed by Michael Mayer, with a new book by Danny Strong), stares down each one of its own structural and narrative flaws, fixes the audience with a challenging glare, then makes a series of moves best known to itself to win our attention.

The show—less about chess, more about the possible end of the world because of Russian-American tensions—works in enough fits and starts to cohere, and in a few sung moments to actually thrill, thanks to the go-for-broke commitment of Christopher, Tveit, and Lea Michele as Florence, Freddie’s lover and chess strategist. The trio are differently excellent performers, who try— ultimately in vain—to make Chess’ characters and story intelligible."