If you’ve heard anything about the ’80s musical “Chess,” it’s probably this: catchy songs, nonsensical story.
When I posit as much to Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher, the stars of the upcoming Broadway revival, Michele deadpans, “What do you mean? Never heard that.” The trio, meeting over their lunch break during rehearsals, start to giggle. “I don’t like anything if it’s too easy,” Michele says.
Clearly, they know the challenge ahead as a fresh take on “Chess” opens this month at New York’s Imperial Theatre. Put simply, “Chess,” first produced in the U.S. in 1988, didn’t work on Broadway. So remounting the show, even though it’s become a cult favorite, is risky at a time when the box office is largely driven by long-running, big-brand musicals like “Wicked” and “Mamma Mia!” But producers are banking on the three popular perform — “Glee” star Michele recently reinvigorated 2022’s “Funny Girl” revival, Tveit was a Tony winner for “Moulin Rouge!” and Christopher has been a rising star in productions like “Hamilton” and “Sweeney Todd” — and a dramatically different book to redeem the musical for its Broadway revival.
“With ‘Chess,’” Christopher says, “it was always like, ‘the music is so great, they just have to make the story –”
Michele offers, “Match.”
“Yeah,” he continues. “Click. Trying to figure out the puzzle sounded exciting.”
Lest that sound daunting, the three, who bonded over the summer while workshopping the show with the creative team, don’t seem worried. In conversation, they’re confident, radiating theater-kid earnestness while still poking fun at each other and themselves. It’s a dynamic that’s instantly on display as they begin to talk about their processes for mastering new material.
“Well, I can’t read, so these guys help me with that,” Michele cracks. (She’s referring to an internet rumor that she’s illiterate.)
Tveit is quick to defend his leading lady. “Well, clearly you can read,” he says before detailing a memorization trick he gleaned from her. “I looked over, and she had a notepad with a bunch of capital letters. Basically if she has three sentences to learn, she writes the first letter of every word. I started doing it and learned my lines in half the time.”
“Yeah! I’m teaching Aaron to read,” she says, enunciating for comedic effect. “Actually, I don’t know know if this is going to help or hurt the cause.”
The Cold War-set show, with music by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, revolves around a chess tournament between two grandmasters, one American (Tveit) and the other Soviet (Christopher), as they fight over a woman (Michele) who manages one and falls in love with the other. “Chess” began as a concept album (with lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice of “Evita” fame) and bowed to acclaim in the West End in 1986. A reimagined version, rewritten by Richard Nelson, premiered on Broadway in 1988 and closed after just two months after a frosty reception.
This iteration of “Chess” is directed by Tony winner Michael Mayer, who worked with Michele on “Spring Awakening” and “Funny Girl,” and has a new book by “Dopesick” creator Danny Strong. Mayer and Strong collaborated closely ahead of rehearsals with the three leads.
“Michael and Danny have been working on this for years,” Tveit says. “They could have easily said, ‘This is what you’re going to do,’ and we would have respected that. Instead they said, ‘What do you think?’”
The three are inspired by Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” another notorious flop that recently found redemption with its Tony-winning 2023 production. And Michele’s turn in “Funny Girl,” replacing Beanie Feldstein as Fanny Brice in the first revival since Barbra Streisand originated the role in 1964, gave them more confidence about succeeding despite the odds.
“In my first ‘Funny Girl’ rehearsal with Michael, I sat him down and said, ‘If I’m going to do this, I need to do it my way.’ And I sang ‘I’m the Greatest Star’ and jumped, climbed and leapt all over,” Michele says. “Trust between an actor and director can create something special, and that’s similar to what we have here.”
Michele suggests the initial Broadway version of “Chess” was ahead of its time. When it opened just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, she says, audiences were seeking stories about unity, not division. “So much was changing politically, and [there was hope] the world was coming to a place of peace.”
Now, Tveit adds, the musical feels more on the nose amid the current fractious political climate. “The play is about a time when people were worried that the two superpowers in the world were going to start a third World War and drop nukes on each other,” he says. “It’s sad to say we might be closer to that now than we were then.”
Audiences will be lured in by ABBA bangers, but Tveit doesn’t think they’ll miss the gravity of the show. “People are coming to hear great pop and rock songs and instead are going to have to think about what’s happening in the world.”
If that sounds unappealing, the three stars want to assure everyone that “Chess,” with its energetic ballads and messy drama, isn’t a bleak night at the theater.
“‘Chess’ is thought to be very serious,” Christopher says. “But the secret sauce is that it’s very funny.”