Chess

I like the music but really none of the characters are likable. I've heard similar opinions from others here, as well.

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Which version did they perform? It's tough to say that I like the show without specifying which version. I was relatively happy with the recent concert version and the Danish production from 2001(?) I think. I believe the show was initially successful in London? I don't remember. The Broadway version had a new book and was a complete mess which is why it received such terrible reviews and that "reputation" seems to have followed the show around ever since regardless of which version is performed.

I loved the Broadway "Chess", book, score, actors and (mostly) direction. I saw it three times and go to Lincoln Center Library every six or seven years to see it again. I found the characters, if not completely likable, fascinating and interesting and (for the time) quite modern. Sure, there are some wrong-headed choices in book and score (in Act One Florence bemoans she "knows him so well" but in Act Two decides "maybe its best to love a stranger, well that's what I've done...") but I'll take that over some of today's more...cohesive if antiseptic shows. I am so in the minority on this musical (then and now) but I will love Judy Kuhn, David Carroll, Phillip Casnoff and the characters they played and the songs they sang in Broadway's "Chess" forever.

Updated On: 4/27/12 at 09:19 PM

Great score but it simply doesn't work as a staged production. It's best appreciated as a concept album.

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Even though Frank Rich hated the show, The New York Times gave the concept album a rave, "a sumptuously recorded...grandiose pastiche that touches half a dozen bases, from Gilbert and Sullivan to late Rodgers and Hammerstein, from Italian opera to trendy synthesizer-based pop, all of it lavishly arranged for the London Symphony Orchestra with splashy electronic embellishments", the was long before Chess opened on Broadway.

I agree that you have one of the best scores of the past 50 years, but the characters are almost impossible to embrace (sounds like I'm talking about "Follies" as well) and the plot sort of resolves in a gray "whatever" way.

I think the recent concert version with Pascal, Menzel, and Groban is very likely as good as it gets.

(and it was very, very good)

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I agree that the Royal Albert Hall concert may be the best it can get.
(Except for that cheerleading number...)

Please, the Albert Hall "Chess" was horrible, except for Groban. Pascal and (especially) Idina were horrible. The Albert Hall reflected the original London version and they were both just bad storytelling. Look how the show starts: We get all these (fun and melodic but) superficial songs ("Merano", "The Story of Chess", "The Merchandisers", "The Arbiter's Song") that crowd and choke the few character songs that the leads have. In the original Florence doesn't have an "I Want" song ("Someone Else's Story" was written for Broadway) and her first real character song, "Nobody's Side", is the SEVENTEENTH song in Act One). The show keeps starting and starting and starting again, giving voice to characters no one cares about or situations that have little impact on the plot. Richard Nelson's book gives depth, a solid backstory and, most importantly, a structure to Chess. I will admit that perhaps I am so in love with the actors in the Broadway version that I might be shortsighted on its overall quality (but I might also argue that I might NOT be) but there is no way in Great White Hell that its worse than the atrocity that was the PBS Albert Hall version.

Updated On: 4/29/12 at 06:18 PM

I saw Chess the Broadway version, last year at the library of the public arts, which I expected to be a hot mess, but it blew me away and saw the DVD of the Royal Albert Hall version again enjoyed this too, but I am obviously very biased.

Maybe the abject failure of 'Chess' might not be the book, but how the book is translated, which in short I mean by poor direction, a show can fail just on poor direction alone, as if this wasn't the case, every version of 'Hamlet' would be a hit.

I really didn't care for the Broadway book and score revisions which turned a more thought-provoking story into a contrived soap opera. What I loved about the original first act and its parade of introductory music was that it played up the varied cultures involved in the story which provided the foundation for the highly political background to a story set during the Cold War and unfolding on foreign soil. I thought it was pure genius. The concept recording has to be one of the best recordings in musical theatre in the last 30 years.

The only worthwhile contribution the Broadway production made was the addition of Someone Else's Story for Florence.

(in Act One Florence bemoans she "knows him so well" but in Act Two decides "maybe its best to love a stranger, well that's what I've done...")

Huh? I've never seen or heard the show with I Know Him So Well in Act One. Heaven Help My Heart almost always precedes I Know Him So Well in the second act (except in the Danish tour and Albert Hall concerts where Heaven Help My Heart is near the end of the first act and I Know Him So Well is in Act 2).

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Saw the original in London. The stagecraft was outstanding.... and boy did it need to be, to make up for a story that you couldn't care much about no matter how hard you tried.

I love STEPS!! LOVE THEM!! I have every CD and single. They are the absolute pinnacle of cheesy pop.

Baby, please
This heart's on the line
Don't waste this precious time
Say you'll be mine

*sigh*



STEPS performing I Know Him So Well

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Updated On: 4/30/12 at 04:21 PM