{"id":51522,"date":"2025-10-02T15:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T15:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/51522\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T15:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T15:41:07","slug":"chess-stars-lea-michele-aaron-tveit-on-reviving-a-broadway-flop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/51522\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Chess’ Stars Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit on Reviving a Broadway Flop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf you\u2019ve heard anything about the \u201980s musical \u201cChess<\/a>,\u201d it\u2019s probably this: catchy songs, nonsensical story.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I posit as much to Lea Michele<\/a>, Aaron Tveit<\/a> and Nicholas Christopher<\/a>, the stars of the upcoming Broadway<\/a> revival, Michele deadpans, \u201cWhat do you mean? Never heard that.\u201d The trio, meeting over their lunch break during rehearsals, start to giggle. \u201cI don\u2019t like anything if it\u2019s too easy,\u201d Michele says.<\/p>\n

\n\tClearly, they know the challenge ahead as a fresh take on \u201cChess\u201d opens this month at New York\u2019s Imperial Theatre. Put simply, \u201cChess,\u201d first produced in the U.S. in 1988, didn\u2019t work on Broadway. So remounting the show, even though it\u2019s become a cult favorite, is risky at a time when the box office is largely driven by long-running, big-brand musicals like \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cMamma Mia!\u201d But producers are banking on the three popular perform \u2014 \u201cGlee\u201d star Michele recently reinvigorated 2022\u2019s \u201cFunny Girl\u201d revival, Tveit was a Tony winner for \u201cMoulin Rouge!\u201d and Christopher has been a rising star in productions like \u201cHamilton\u201d and \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d \u2014 and a dramatically different book to redeem the musical for its Broadway revival.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWith \u2018Chess,\u2019\u201d Christopher says, \u201cit was always like, \u2018the music is so great, they just have to make the story \u2013\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMichele offers, \u201cMatch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah,\u201d he continues. \u201cClick. Trying to figure out the puzzle sounded exciting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLest that sound daunting, the three, who bonded over the summer while workshopping the show with the creative team, don\u2019t seem worried. In conversation, they\u2019re confident, radiating theater-kid earnestness while still poking fun at each other and themselves. It\u2019s a dynamic that\u2019s instantly on display as they begin to talk about their processes for mastering new material.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWell, I can\u2019t read, so these guys help me with that,\u201d Michele cracks. (She\u2019s referring to an internet rumor that she\u2019s illiterate.)<\/p>\n

\n\tTveit is quick to defend his leading lady. \u201cWell, clearly you can read,\u201d he says before detailing a memorization trick he gleaned from her. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah! I\u2019m teaching Aaron to read,\u201d she says, enunciating for comedic effect. \u201cActually, I don\u2019t know know if this is going to help or hurt the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Cold War-set show, with music by ABBA\u2019s Benny Andersson and Bj\u00f6rn 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. \u201cChess\u201d began as a concept album (with lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice of \u201cEvita\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis iteration of \u201cChess\u201d is directed by Tony winner Michael Mayer, who worked with Michele on \u201cSpring Awakening\u201d and \u201cFunny Girl,\u201d and has a new book by \u201cDopesick\u201d creator Danny Strong. Mayer and Strong collaborated closely ahead of rehearsals with the three leads.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMichael and Danny have been working on this for years,\u201d Tveit says. \u201cThey could have easily said, \u2018This is what you\u2019re going to do,\u2019 and we would have respected that. Instead they said, \u2018What do you think?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe three are inspired by Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u201cMerrily We Roll Along,\u201d another notorious flop that recently found redemption with its Tony-winning 2023 production. And Michele\u2019s turn in \u201cFunny Girl,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn my first \u2018Funny Girl\u2019 rehearsal with Michael, I sat him down and said, \u2018If I\u2019m going to do this, I need to do it my way.\u2019 And I sang \u2018I\u2019m the Greatest Star\u2019 and jumped, climbed and leapt all over,\u201d Michele says. \u201cTrust between an actor and director can create something special, and that\u2019s similar to what we have here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMichele suggests the initial Broadway version of \u201cChess\u201d 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. \u201cSo much was changing politically, and [there was hope] the world was coming to a place of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, Tveit adds, the musical feels more on the nose amid the current fractious political climate. \u201cThe 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,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s sad to say we might be closer to that now than we were then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAudiences will be lured in by ABBA bangers, but Tveit doesn\u2019t think they\u2019ll miss the gravity of the show. \u201cPeople are coming to hear great pop and rock songs and instead are going to have to think about what\u2019s happening in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf that sounds unappealing, the three stars want to assure everyone that \u201cChess,\u201d with its energetic ballads and messy drama, isn\u2019t a bleak night at the theater.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c\u2018Chess\u2019 is thought to be very serious,\u201d Christopher says. \u201cBut the secret sauce is that it\u2019s very funny.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019ve heard anything about the \u201980s musical \u201cChess,\u201d it\u2019s probably this: catchy songs, nonsensical story. When I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[39498,32145,109,146,85,46,39499,39500],"class_list":["post-51522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-aaron-tveit","tag-broadway","tag-chess","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lea-michele","tag-nicholas-christopher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}