NYC EOY 2025 (part five)

Bryce Pinkham

Whether or not you enjoy or approve of this new book for the musical Chess, it all comes down to the Arbiter.

Our last full day in New York, we had breakfast in, a few items from the bodega around the corner and a casual lie-in in preparation for an entire day to be spent out. Has our President ever visited a bodega? I think he would have a nervous attack. He hates normal people, he wouldn’t know what he was looking at.

We spent a few hours in the Met. As many times as I have visited, there are still galleries I have never experienced, and of course, there are always new exhibits. We lingered in the American Wing, specifically among the Native American works. I was exposed to George Morrison in a show focusing on the midcentury work he created in NYC.

To add atmosphere, they were playing "So What" by Miles Davis on a loop. I know the song is over nine minutes long, but some of us spend more time than that in one exhibit, especially when one is high. I don’t know why they didn’t just play all of Kind of Blue, folks think it’s a hep side.

"Construction in Fantasy"
George Morrison, 1953

The day was cold, real cold. We avoided taxis the entire day, including a walk across Central Park to a subway station which was more of a march than a stroll. We took a pilgrimage to the Drama Book Shop, my first to this “new” location on 39th Street, where I picked up a recently revised edition of Born With Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams and a signed copy of Plague Play by Erin Proctor.

I am old enough to be familiar with two previous incarnations, including the second floor space on 48th Street, which I recall being a bit cramped and tatty. Nothing like this spacious and bustling locale with its cafe and seating.

Dinner was something of a misstep, at a rooftop stop in Times Square. I am sure that during the spring and fall it’s lovely, but even enclosed for the season it was fucking freezing. Finally: Chess.

Drama Book Shop

The last time we attended a Broadway musical, it was in 2023 for the highly successful revival of Merrily We Roll Along. And like Chess, the original Broadway production was a flop. Merrily director Maria Friedman provided her revival a focus to the story audiences had found difficult to follow due to its multi-year sequence of events which are told in reverse-chronological order. From the jump, she made it clear the play is all about the character of Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff) – we were to keep our eye on him. The tale was much clearer to understand, and we could enjoy the music and the performances.

With a new book for Chess, written by Danny Strong (co-creator of TV shows Dopesick and Empire) they have attempted to provide context to a Cold War era story which, by the Broadway run in 1988, was already at an apparent conclusion.

A narrator, which came as a surprise fourth lead of the production, played with hilarious comic timing by Bryce Pinkham, has been expanded to educate younger members of the audience – those forty and under, fans of Tveit and Michele from their apparent volume the night we attended – what the Cold War was, what was at stake, and what any of this might have to do with an international chess competition.

Nicholas Christopher

When a person is depicted wearing a mask in a TV show or movie or in a play, do we need to explain why they are? No, because we all understand what year it is. And so it was that forty years ago, if there was any competition between an American and a Soviet, everyone understood that it had additional weight, or baggage, if you will. I would be curious to know how someone who didn’t live through that era receive the news that the results of the act one match in Merano had a direct effect on the defeat of President Carter, or that the act two match in Bangkok played out against the backdrop of actual NATO war games in 1983 that almost started World War III.

Pinkham also steps into the story as the Arbiter, which is a referee for a chess match. The Arbiter has one of my favorite songs in the entire production, which is unfortunately broken up into a longer piece called “Opening Ceremony.” A more complete version, called “The Arbiter” and sung by Björn Skifs, was released as a single, with an additional verse. Pinkham has been granted the uninterrupted, complete version as a star turn and makes a meal of it. If the original cast recording was this song alone I’d buy it.

What is most compelling, the reason the show is worth attending, are the epic solo turns by each of the three stars. I have heard of Aaron Tveit, but he’s not someone I have had the occasion to pay attention to. The several appearances he has made promoting the show on various morning or late night night shows, where he has invariably performed “One Night in Bangkok” did not impress, but through no fault of his own. It’s not a song which compliments an actual singer. It’s dated. Kinda cringey.

AND YET. In context, as part of the story, the act two opener, when we have already gotten to know who this guy is, and where he is, that he is a defeated American chess champion who is now a talking head for the game, in performance he was sexy, and hilarious, and big fun!

Aaron Tveit

But that’s not the best of his work here. In its original incarnation, the American and the Russian were types. Remember, this was a story told by two Swedes and a Brit, folks who were squeezed between two dangerous, dysfunctional opposites. The American, named Freddie Trumper (the Arbiter is quick to remind us this show was written in 1984) was originally merely an asshole, and unfortunately queer-coded. Tveit’s Freddie, we are told, is bipolar, and requires medication to help him function. His childhood trauma, reflected in the song “Pity the Child,” is achingly rendered by Tveit. When I was a teenager, I felt this song was a commentary on how Americans whine about how unfair the world is and blame our failings on our parents. As an adult, I have much more empathy for this character.

And that’s important to a modern audience, because the original basically told us this guy is the way he is because he is American, and that guy is the way he is because he is Russian. We are told the Russian, Anatoly Sergievsky, was taken from his parents when he was a child, that he was programmed to be a chess champion. But in his performance, the way he stands and walks and speaks, Christopher suggests he is also neurodivergent. Are these reasons or excuses for the men of Chess to behave the way they do?

Regardless, I had seen Nicholas Christopher bring down the house once in my life, now I’ve seen him do it not one more time, but two more times. He may be the least well-known of the three leads, but every audience who sees this leaves having seen him as a co-equal, or even the star. He crushes the act one closer, “Anthem,” and later received a mid-song ovation during “Endgame.”

Lea Michele

If Lea Michele suffers in comparison to these two performances, it is through no fault of her own. The character of Florence, the paramour of first Freddie and then Anatoly is problematic. They show her to be a brilliant chess strategist, her character exists to be a foil for the men. Her own story, that she was a Hungarian refugee as a child during the Budapest Uprising of 1956, and left in limbo as to the fate of her missing father – was he a dissident or a Soviet spy? – has always felt tacked on to the larger story.

In both professional iterations (West End 1986, Broadway 1988) Freddie and Anatoly receive somewhat satisfying conclusions, while Florence is left with nothing. News of her father’s fate never arrives. Here, we are provided a coda in which, in exchange for the defected Anatoly returning to Russia, Florence is reunited with her father. It was a bit jarring, as this elderly man  is led on stage by a CIA agent; first I thought, which sexy chorus member in old age make-up is that, and then, has he just been sitting backstage this entire time?

Michele does get her star turns, though, and they are epic. “Nobody’s Side” and “Heaven Help My Heart” are act one standouts. Unfortunately, for Florence and for Michele, there is or was only one featured number for the character in act two, and it’s a duet with Anatoly’s estranged Russian spouse Svetlana, “I Know Him So Well.” To add to her solo performances, Michele concludes with “Someone Else’s Story,” written for the West End production – to be sung by Svetlana. The song is literally someone else’s story.

Whether you enjoy this version of Chess depends, I believe, on whether or not you have a sense of humor. Since the holidays I have watched the original West End production on YouTube, and it has a light book, the story is mostly sung-through and like the concept album, and seems to take itself quite seriously. Even so, this modern version has its moments of head-scratching weirdness. It’s odd that they used a hydraulic lift to briefly show Florence and Anatoly in a literal bed together, and yet there is not one moment in the entire production when two people sit down at a table, however briefly, to play chess.

But I loved it.  

The next day was December 31. We headed to the airport and flew home. My wife and I have been in each other’s presence every New Year’s Eve since meeting in the streets of Athens, Ohio at the stroke of midnight, January 1, 1990. She’s my alternative girlfriend. And we have spent a couple NYE’s in NYC, but only a couple – 2022, 2023. Thought we arrived on December 27, we decided it would be enough (and considerably less expensive) to return on the last day of the year, and after all, home is our favorite spot, anyway.

конец.