Chess revival? — Page 2

I love Chess, but no matter what you do, it will be a hard sell.

I think if you're a good person, and eat your vegetables, and every night you say a little prayer that there'll always be producers who are dumb enough to miss the fact that reviving mega-flops never results in a hit - maybe then you'll get your wish.

Tell that to producers of Follies, which keeps coming back for some weird reason. Nobody ever whines about another Follies production (unless it's to do with casting). At least Chess was a hit in London and hasn't received multiple Broadway or West End revivals since.

Hopefully, the Royal Albert Hall concert provided some additional exposure and generated interest in the show itself.

I think there are benefits to looking at the Swedish production which was staged in 2002/3 and re-wrote most of the story and added a few new cracking songs and sifted out some of the less important that didn't move the story along. The Gothenburg revival from a few years back added more depth and looked stunning and dared to cut a couple more songs and add small extra bits to further develop the character of Freddie and move the story along.

It didn't succeed in making any of the characters more likeable but did flesh them out and with added scripted sections all underscored you understood their motivation far better and the story moved better.

Whilst the last UK touring musician version had its faults the attention to detail in developing the intense relationship between Florence, Freddie and Anatoly.

"Tell that to producers of Follies, which keeps coming back for some weird reason."

Except Follies was never a mega-flop, as Chess was.

God, please make this happen

I love the score of Chess, but at least Follies has depth to the characters. Chess is just three people screaming interchangeable pop songs at one another (in Florence's case, songs that blatantly contradict each other - she's upset because she's fallen love with a man she doesn't know at all, then 20 minutes later she "knows him so well?". Richard Nelson's Broadway version remains my favorite of the many different copies of the script - but not even Nelson can make "Pity the Child" a sympathetic moment for a character so obtuse and annoying.

I love the score of Chess, but at least Follies has depth to the characters.

The "depth" of the foursome (the other characters, not so much) doesn't make them any more likable.

she's upset because she's fallen love with a man she doesn't know at all, then 20 minutes later she "knows him so well"?

Well, that's not what Heaven Help My Heart is really about (and most versions of the show put the song in Act 1, anyway).

I agree that one of the biggest issues is that I don't really care about any of the characters

See, that's exactly how I feel about Follies. The characters are either pathetic or despicable.

Mister Matt said: "Except Follies was never a mega-flop, as Chess was.

Is that a technical term? Follies flopped all three times on Broadway, which is kinda mega in its own right. At any rate, the flopping of Chess, mega or otherwise, was the Broadway production, which was highly revised and completely restaged from the hit London production.



"

You're not wrong but the FOLLIES producers of the most recent revival had some reason to believe they had a hit on their hand - a sold out run in Washington and an acclaimed cast (including Broadway's biggest star, Bernadette Peters) turning out Tony-worthy performances. Up until Jake in Sunday the show had the highest grossing week of any Sondheim show on Broadway ever, and paid back a sizable proportion of its investment having some very strong weeks and almost never dipping below the weekly nut.

If they revive Chess with some of the strategy above, such as with Idina Menzel and Josh Groban, there is good reason it might succeed. But reviving it for the sake of reviving it without any clear plan or reason to succeed like they had for FOLLIES would seem very risky to me.

Updated On: 6/21/17 at 10:36 PM

No one wants to see that Idina woman scream her way through this.

rosscoe(au) said: "No one wants to see that Idina woman scream her way through this.



"

true not again

"Follies flopped all three times on Broadway, which is kinda mega in its own right."

I should probably define terms, you're right. Mega-flop, to me, means a show that closes fast (Chess ran for two months; Follies for a year and two months), and was also poorly received by critics. Follies, as we all know, is generally extremely highly regarded. Frank Rich has called it "brilliant." About Chess, Rich said:

"For over three hours, the characters onstage at the Imperial yell at one another to rock music. The show is a suite of temper tantrums, all amplified to a piercing pitch that would not be out of place in a musical about one of chess's somewhat noisier fellow sports, like stock-car racing."

"If contentiousness were drama, ''Chess'' would be at least as riveting as ''The Bickersons.'' That the evening has the theatrical consistency of quicksand - and the drab color scheme to match - can be attributed to the fact that the show's book, by the American playwright Richard Nelson, and lyrics, by Andrew Lloyd Webber's former and cleverest collaborator, Tim Rice, are about nothing except the authors' own pompous pretensions."

"Their tale of international intrigue, with its nefarious spies and headline-making defection, is incoherent and jerry-built, John le Carre boiled down to a sketchy paragraph. Even more ridiculous (and windier) is the parallel love story - which sends Florence, a Hungarian refugee to the United States, ricocheting arbitrarily between the American and the Soviet players as if she had no self-respect or political convictions. By the time the love triangle turns into a rectangle, with the sudden addition of Anatoly's estranged but impossibly noble wife, ''Chess'' starts to resemble Chinese checkers."

"But the musical's moral stance proves hypocritical minutes later, when, for no reasons other than to plug a catchy song (''One Night in Bangkok'' and give the production its one iota of dancing, ''Chess'' takes us on an exploitative tour of Bangkok's sleazy flesh palaces."

"The studied ideological neutrality of the script is matched by the music - composed in a sometimes tuneful but always characterless smorgasbord of mainstream pop styles by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of the Swedish rock combine Abba."



Now, I never thought of Rich as infallible, but I agreed with every word he wrote about Chess, an idiotic, brain-dead, tissue-thin diaper load of sentimental clichés, with the social-political sophistication of an unusually simple-minded 11-year-old, clumsily cobbled together merely to support a portfolio of pleasant yet utterly empty-headed, folk-song-simplistic pop songs. Enjoy it if you like, but the show is,at best, a guilty pleasure, not an underappreciated masterpiece.

Updated On: 6/22/17 at 09:33 AM

Now, I never thought of Rich as infallible, but I agreed with every word he wrote about Chess

I don't agree with every word (the comments about "yelling" and "piercing pitch" sound like grumpy old get-off-my-lawn man), but I wasn't a fan of the Broadway production in structure or design. And I never liked One Night in Bangkok in the show. It doesn't work and never has.

I've never said Chess was a masterpiece, but it does contain one of my all-time favorite scores. A guilty pleasure? I feel no guilt about enjoying it. Thin book with sappy cliched characters? Welcome to the first semester of History of Musical Theatre. I'm okay with that. Empty-headed, folk-song-simplistic pop songs? Mostly disagree.

I get that I'm supposed to think Follies is "brilliant" because the academics say so, but I never have and I doubt I ever will (especially the awful book). I think there is some brilliance in the score (even in the songs I don't like), but academic brilliance doesn't always lead to enjoyment, especially when you're burned out on the only songs you like because they have been performed ad nauseum at every Sondheim-themed event and by every Sondheim fan at any given opportunity. If I never hear "I'm Still Here" again before I die, I'll be grateful.