Happy 30th Anniversary to the West End Premiere of CHESS

I've always loved the show, especially the original West End version. Would have killed to see the original cast with Elaine Paige, no one beats her on recording for Florence (Judy Kuhn comes close on some songs though).

Was just listening the concept album this am! Would love to see the UK version on broadway (has Richard Nelson dropped all objections to that happening?)

I love this show. I saw a regional production of it in New Zealand and have gathered as many recordings of the show as I can; the London concept album is my favorite. What a gorgeous score.

^ I can already see in my mind's eye how that would work: a starkly abstract design, with the floor painted in a checkerboard pattern, and the sets and props as spare as possible. Almost more concert-like, to emphasize the fact it's not a play with songs, but a musical, and should inhabit a musical world. And no choreography, or at least very little. Sheesh -- in either the British or the American versions, that would be harrowing.

Updated On: 5/17/16 at 09:28 AM

Honestly, I feel like the love for the London version is more of an overreaction to how wrongly the Broadway version was presented in its initial production. Yes, Freddie, Florence, and Molokov in particular became wholly unlikable, and the Nelson script kicks the audience's puppy so to speak, but the London version was no less deeply flawed, and everyone went into the Broadway version knowing they'd have to fix it (though in the end they differed on how to do so).

The American version is much easier to fix (as proven by Robert Coe with the 1990 U.S. tour and David H. Bell in the 1990 Lincolnshire Marriott production), because more of it is spoken material, and judicious editing makes a big difference, especially in the last quarter of the show where most of the major problems lie. All you have to do is keep the characters' flaws, but make them more human and relatable. From there, it's a matter of trimming for time and utility (for example, combining scenes to remove unnecessary transitions, as no one is going back to the revolve Trevor Nunn used in the original Broadway production).

Further, I feel in many ways the American version improved on several problems with the London version. For example, the split-match (Anatoly and Freddie in Act I, and Anatoly and Viigand in Act II) format is a key weakness of the London version. For their flaws (all of them have second-act problems), the later variations have a much greater coherency, which stems from the fact that the single chess match (between Anatoly and Freddie) acts as a framing event for the dramatic action. The benefit of a single-match format is that the action is much more cohesive, with the match providing the outline for the drama.

The only thing I'd really change about the Broadway version, aside from what I discussed above, is scaling the timeline of the show back to the Cold War. The material in the Broadway and Sydney productions inevitably ran into the glasnost and perestroika issues. The most immediate problem of glasnost and perestroika is that they made Anatoly's defection from the Soviet Union almost paradoxical. Without the onerous travel restrictions of a Soviet citizen, the defection is more of a personal than a political statement, and almost certainly loses the intended punch (which was to parallel Anatoly to Viktor Korchnoi, a Soviet grandmaster who left Russia because he was blocked from rising to the top of the Russian chess circuit). One of the crucial things to understand when dealing with Chess is that it was conceived of as a very timely musical, dealing with east/west tensions and the odd phenomenon of chess celebrity in the West. It is almost impossible to justify a time setting other than 1986, or a few years before it.

Updated On: 5/17/16 at 10:33 AM

I have seen approximately 25 productions over the past 30 years and musically its one of my absolute favorites.  I do think now it needs to be set as a period piece.  As little off broadway production starring Kathleen Rowe McAllen as Florence (I think it was the Master theatre?) set it in the 70's which actually worked save for the Rubik's Cube line in the Merchandisers Song.

I also agree that the choreography needs to completely eliminated.  Its distracting and has no point other than perhaps the stunning opening number from London  "Story of Chess", perhaps as little Florence's father telling her how the game began.