Mickey Jo (0:00)

Shout out to the person in the comments section who was about to type the words, I was waiting for you to make this video. Well, guess what? You were right. I have. It's here. And perhaps you could say, you know me so well. Oh, my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. And yes, the rumours are true. I just got highlights today. I have no idea if you can see them in the sort of the blue room lighting that's going on right, right now. Why have I chosen blue for Chess? An interesting question. What was I going to do? Black and white, what do you do? What's Chess themed lighting? Questions that I'm sure the marketing team of the upcoming Chess revival had to ask themselves when pitching the new images for the key art. Oh, and by the way, Chess is coming back to Broadway. I buried the lead a little bit there, but it's true. Chess is returning to Broadway after decades. It's having its first major Broadway revival and this is very exciting news. It's very interesting news because, you know, it's not not some niche show. Chess is very well remembered. It has a lot of enduring big songs. And even though it hasn't been seen in a major Broadway stage revival or really in a major West End revival, unless you're counting the one at the Coliseum, which, you know, differing opinions, it has been staged incredibly frequently, including numerous times in the last four or five years in concert. But today I am here to discuss with you the news that it is going to be heading back to Broadway. There is much that we already know about this revival, including three of its stars, Aaron Tveit, Nicholas Christopher and Lea Michele. And there is plenty more that we don't know, but we can speculate about just a little bit, including who might be joining them in the role of Svetlana and what theatre it might be playing in New York. I have theories about both of those things. Stay tuned to find out. And as always, I want to know what you think as well. Let me know in the comments section down below. Are we excited about the Chess revival? Do we have any theories and expectations about this, about further casting? Let me know what you think. Finally, if you want to stay up to date with all of the Broadway and West End theatre news, make sure that you're subscribed right here on YouTube or following me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let's talk about Chess. So let's talk a little Bit first of all about the history of chess as a musical. Now, Chess features a score by Bjorn Elves and Benny Anderson, aka Benny and Bjorn, the two Bs from ABBA, with lyrics by Sir Tim Rice. It premiered in the West End and then subsequently on Broadway in the mid-1980s. And the story depicted Cold War tensions, principally between the United States and the Soviet as engaged with through a very competitive game of chess, the Chess World Championships, I believe, and one particular chess player from the US named Freddy Trumper, and the representative from the USSR named Anatoly Sergeyevsky. Only neither of these are really our principal protagonist. We see this unfolding through the eyes of a woman named Florence, Florence Vassi. She works with Freddie, but she becomes enamoured with his opponent. It's all quite scandalous. Florence was originally played in the West End by Elaine Page, because it was the eight. And of course she was. And honestly correct, and subsequently on Broadway by Judy Kuhn. And that wasn't the only change made to the show when it crossed the Atlantic and headed to Broadway for the first time. The West End production hadn't been hugely successful. It was nominated for a couple of Olivier Awards. I don't believe that it won any. It had closed in the West End within three or four years of opening. It had mixed reviews, critically speaking. And when they took the show to Broadway, it was heavily reworked, the timeline of the whole thing being the biggest change. I believe it was first on Broadway that they took what used to be a story unfolding over multiple years and made it one wild weekend. Director Trevan Anne also drafted in a new writer, the playwright Richard Nelson, in order to expand the book and incorporate more dialogue in order to help tell this complicated political international story. Judy Kuhn replaced Elaine Page in part because the character of Florence Vassey, who was traditionally British, was then reconceived as an American character. And despite all of this, the Broadway production was actually considerably less successful, closing within its first year year and getting largely critically panned, including by the New York Times, Frank Rich said that it had the theatrical consistency of quicksand. And since then, like many other shows that weren't hugely successful the first time around, but have endured largely because of their music. So many of the songs from Chess have gone on to become big hits and musical theater staples and, you know, standalone pop hits as well, like One Night in Bangkok and I Know him so well, thanks in part due to the success of a pre West End concept album, many attempts have been made to rework and fix troubled material. I've seen multiple productions of Chess in my lifetime. I think I've seen chess three different times. I saw a UK tour which was all set on a giant chessboard. Lots of metaphorical imagery going on there, black and white, costuming and actor, musician elements. I'm not entirely convinced that that perfectly made sense, but it was hugely creative and there were some great performances. That was my first exposure to chess and I really fell in love with the score. The next time I saw it was in an intimate off West End venue that no longer exists. But again, some really tal performances. One of the key political figures, a Russian leader whose name escapes me right now, but if I do this with my face, eventually it'll come back to me. Nope, it isn't. I'm gonna have to look it up. Molokov. Molokov. Like the Cocktail. In that production, Molokov was reconceived as Molokova and was turned into a female character, which I thought was a really interesting choice. And then many years later, I saw a concert version starring Samantha Barks at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which I believe was some sort of a replica of a concert staging that has been produced in multiple countries around the world. And it's the version of the material in this one which I anticipate being the version which is going to Broadway, which we'll talk about in just a moment. But I will say, if you are intrigued about the history of chess, and particularly what went wrong the first time around, then there's a YouTube documentary coming out very soon that I'm incredibly excited about that my good friends over at Wait in the Wings right here on YouTube are working on. If you haven't yet subscribed to Wait in the Wings, go and subscribe and stay tuned for the Chess documentary coming very soon. ABBA and the Cold War. What more could you you want? In the meantime, we're not really here to talk about prior productions of Chess. We're here to talk about the new one. Let's talk about the upcoming Broadway revival and everything that we know so far. So let me read to you from this press release, which I prematurely put in a different email folder. Here we are. Chess will open on Broadway this fall. This fall, everybody. Starring Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele and Nicholas Christopher. And can I just say, good for you, Nicholas Christopher to be Build a title Build Up There along with Aaron Tveit and Lea Michele. Very well deserved. I will say that rumors of this production have been circulating for some time and Lea Michele has been attached to many of those rumours, but it was also talked about that Ramin Karimlou might have been attached to a broader revival of Chess at some point. No one is working more back to back than Ramin is. My goodness. And it is billed here as Tony Award winner Aaron Tveit, of course, for his performance in Moulin Rouge. Emmy Award nominee Lea Michele, of course, recently seen on Broadway as a replacement Fanny Brice in the revival of Funny Girl at the August Wilson Theatre. And Nicholas Christopher, recently seen in a handful of shows. His bio will be included here as well. But I saw him Off Broadway in Little Shop of Horrors opposite Sherri Renee Scott. I thought he was wonderful, deeply charming in that, clearly very talented. But beforehand he had already given acclaimed performances in the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, which I also saw also in Jelly's Last Jam at Encores, which I heard terrific things about, and in Hamilton as a replacement George Washington. Anyway, Lea Michele will obviously be playing the central diva role of Florence. Aaron Tveit will be playing the American Freddie. He will be skrelting Pity the Child, like many, many a tenor before him. And Nicholas Christopher will be playing the racially ambiguous, yet, you know, Russian character of Anatoly Sergeyevsky. The reason I say that is because I've seen so many different men cast in this role, none of whom have been Eastern European, but who have been of Middle Eastern descent, of Iranian Canadian descent, of Australian descent. What they tend to go for historically, and I'll say this in politically correct way that I can and would love to every performer I've ever seen in this role, who have all been fantastic and, you know, it doesn't really matter all that much, but they tend to go for one white guy and one less white guy. Now, I'll talk more about the casting in a little bit and what I think about these performers in these roles, because I do have a great many thoughts here. But it's interesting that we've only had these three announced. I actually think that that is accurate. Very often you see casts announced for Chess with a central quartet of performers being revealed with Svetlana alongside them. And they kind of FR frame it as like the four of them all in this complicated web of romance. And to be honest, Svetlana is scarcely involved. Like, she gets brought into it. She sings one song, unless it's the Broadway production, in which case then she has to go through the indignity of that one song getting taken away from her so that Judy Kuhn can sound stunning on yet another ballad in the second act. Honestly, Florence, sometimes it really is someone else's story. You took her husband, you can let her have one song. And so I'm inspired with confidence that this revival has framed this as the three of them initially with further casting to be subsequently announced. And we have this image here looking a little bit like challengers, the 10 year reunion with the two men in side profile and Lea Michele staring down the camera in a Morticia Addams dress, giving you the hair and no buckle. Fat looking stern. It's in grayscale. Everyone is black and white. We have an announcement video here as well. Let's watch that. Oh, it's on YouTube. Here we go. Oh, falling chess pieces. Somebody knocks the board over. Sweat. Oh, heels, hands. This looks like an insurance advert of some description. It's very tense. Fire. Aaron Tveit, he's angry. Nicholas Christopher, he's indifferent. Lea Michele, hair blowing, wafting gently in the breeze. She's got a Beyonce fan on her because. Absolutely. Why not? Oh, they turned to look at me. That's a very intense look. It's all. It's like the three of them are looking at me across a bar and I'm scared even to reply. Anyway, let's talk a little bit more about what we know from this press release. So let's talk about the creative team. Interesting things here. So this is going to be directed by Michael Mayer, which goes some of the way towards explaining the Lea Michele connection because of course, she recently appeared in his revival of Funny Girl. Michael Mayer, who has directed many other Broadway shows, including a previous production of Chess at the Kennedy center, as well as Spring Awakening and Green Day's American Idiot and Little Shop of Horrors off Broadway, which Nicholas Christopher recently seen in Am I Being Completely Foolish or am I missing any opportunity that he's had to previously work with Aaron Tveit? Everyone's worked with Aaron Tveit and yet perhaps this is their first time working together. In any case, Michael Mayer directing this production of Chess, which I think is encouraging, is intriguing to me. Choreography will be by Lauren Lotaro. I'm always intrigued to know what the kind of dance language of a Chess production is going to be because it's not necessarily obvious. It's not necessarily very emblematic of the 80s. Other than songs like One Night in Bangkok, everything tends to be a lot more intense and character driven. Music supervision will be by Brian Youssefer, of course. Music and lyrics credited to Benny Anderson, Tim Rice and Bjorn Olveas based on an idea by Tim Rice. I don't know if I knew that, but new book by Danny Strong. Is this news has this been part of the concert stagings that we have been seeing. Let me try and look into this and see if this is something new for this production. Oh, it's not. It's absolutely not. Okay. This is a version that I have probably seen before. Oh, here it is. So back in June 20So Tim Rice announced that after a table reading, a revival of Chess with a restructured storyline would be staged on Broadway in late 2018. And I know a lot of life has happened between now and then, but obviously it is a conspicuous number of years later. It is in fact 2025 at that point. The production was said to feature a new book penned by Danny Strong and directed by Michael Mayer. Have we heard that? But yes, if that production had a pre Broadway tryout, that was the Kennedy center version that he directed. It's all making sense now. That starred Ramin Karim Liu, Raoul Esparza, Karen Le and Ruthie Ann Miles. I remember now there was talk of that particular production being brought to Broadway and I believe then that the version I saw in concert at Theatre Royal Drury Lane also utilized those additions to the book. But then I could be wrong. Eventually we will find out. And before I forget to say this, it is obviously incredibly topical and poignant that Chess is being revived on Broadway right now. Not only is it this long awaited production, but you know, it's about Cold War international tensions. And so it seems very fitting that we're having the first major fully staged revival of Chess alongside a major revival of the Cold War. Oh, you have to laugh. Otherwise you just, you just fear Nuclear Winter too acutely and you worry about going outside. What else do we know about this production? Dates on sale and theater information. Additional casting and creative team will be announced shortly. But it does say fall 2025 at a Schubert theatre to be announced. Which if I'm not mistaken, implies that something is going to to close and announce closing in order for this to have a Broadway home. And that's not necessarily a huge surprise. If you pay attention to the Broadway grosses. The writing, sadly is on the wall for shows at a couple of Schubert venues. But as we've seen previously, it's not necessarily just struggling shows that may be pushed out in favor of more successful ones. That being said, Chess is a revival of a musical and those don't tend to be extended open ended runs. They tend to be limited. However, however, however, as a lot of recent Clay productions have proved, you can be very financially successful even with a limited run. And the Schubert organization own and operate a great many Broadway theaters. I'm probably missing something here, but I dare say the ones we could expect to see housing Chess, it's not going to be the likes of, like the Lyceum, even if it did become available, or the James Earl Jones or the Longacre or the golden, which I dare say also won't be available because Operation Mincemeat doing quite well. It's going to be something a little bit, bit bigger. The Majestic Theater where Gypsy is playing until October of this year. Could it be closing to make way for not another Andrew Webber show, which it once housed with Phantom for multiple decades, but with a Tim Rice show? That would be interesting. It could also be that the current shows in the Broadhurst or the Schubert Theatre could be closing to make way for a production of Chess. It could go into the Barrymore. We've seen musicals in the Barrymore before. Or the Music Box. At this point, while the 2025-2026 Broadway season is beginning to take, some things have become apparent. But there are still many theatres that aren't yet spoken for. In any case, it's gonna go to a Broadway house. It's gonna go to a Broadway house of a decent size. And spoiler alert, tickets are going to be of a decent fee as well. And you can find out more about all of the above. You can sign up for First Access tickets, in fact, @chess broadway.com so, as promised, let's talk about this production, about everything we know so far, and let's talk about whether or not I think this is going to be. I think Chess is an underappreciated show. I think it has all of the right ingredients. It has a great story, it has great songs with commercial appeal that many of us already know. It has compelling characters. It has a romantic plot that doesn't necessarily feel forced. The challenge is in reconciling all of these elements. I think a lot of the wrong decisions were made in the past. Like I said, it feels pertinent right now as well. You have powerhouse performers in these roles, which is certainly what the score needs. Needs. Evidently it is going to sound fantastic with these three. Aaron singing Pity the Child is going to be great. Lea Michele singing All of this score is going to be great. Nick Christopher is going to sound wonderful. Singing Anthem. Are you kidding me? I'm excited about it. The rumored name I had been hearing, and I dare say you may have heard this as well, was Solea Pfeiffer for the role of Svetlana, which is something I would really appreciate because she is another sensational vocalist. She is currently starring as Satine in Moulin Rouge on Broadway, but I believe she is set to conclude her run in that later this summer, which would mean she's free in the fall. She's played Svetlana previously and so that wouldn't be a total surprise. And you know, I am very intrigued about who is going to be playing Molokov or indeed Molokova if they also decide to go down that route, which I suspect they won't. And some of the other characters, including the arbiter, that's also a big and exciting sing. If Raoul Esparza gets to go back to Broadway, then that would be terrific. He was just announced for something the other day, I feel, but I don't believe it was a Broadway bound show. I'm forgetting all of the relevant information. This is what happens when I film one of these videos after midnight. But what I want to tell you is what I think of these performances now with Aaron Tveit. I'm excited about this because he has forged so much of his successful, Tony Award winning, acclaimed and, you know, fan beloved career playing romantic characters, playing these charming, beautifully sung, handsome roles. And only very recently with taking over from Josh Groban as Sweeney in Sweeney Todd, has he started to move in a slightly different direction. Interestingly enough, Josh Groban has appeared in Chess multiple times, always singing the other role, Anatoly Sergeyevsky, very much because of his vocal type. But also Anatoly is also the more charming and romantic of the two characters. Freddy Trumper is kind of a douche and he's this really messed up guy. We find out more about his tragic family backstory. But he's a little abusive, honest. He's very toxic. And these are not traits that we have had the chance to see in many previous Aaron Tve performances. Even in the likes of Sweeney, you know, he grappled with those menacing qualities. And I did get to see him play John Wilkes Booth, but he has this charm that manages to filter through all of that. I will be very intrigued to see how much darkness he can dig into for Chess. Then we have Nicholas Christopher, who only in a few shows has managed to display such remarkable versatility. He is also, and this is not meant as any kind of a disparagement, not really a huge Broadway name on the same tier as the other two. So you can assume that his casting here is because he did a really great job with the material and he's really right for the role and not because his name is being used in the same way to try and sell tickets. Which brings us quite neatly to Lea Michele, who I thought was great in Funny Girl. She was brilliantly cast in Funny Girl and she sounded fantastic. And she's going to sound fantastic singing this score as well. I am excited to hear it. Obviously she has a not uncontroversial part cast, but her recent Broadway return in Funny Girl managed to be very successful, very successful for the box office and went without any controversy whatsoever. I nearly called that her Broadway debut. Of course, it wasn't her Broadway debut. She was in the original Broadway casts of Ragtime and Spring Awakening, which of course was the first time she worked with Michael Mayer. But if you were to ask me how confident I am in Leah's characterization as Florence there, I'm not quite as sure. And I'm sure that she will be able to surprise me just a little bit. But there has always been a similarity between her her and the actress who played her mother on Glee, Idina Menzel. And I don't just mean vocally. I don't just mean physically in terms of the way that they approach a character and the kind of acting that we see from them. Adina wasn't quite right for Florence when she did it at the Royal Albert hall concert nearly two decades ago. It's a deceptively difficult role to get right. I do still prefer the British version of the character. I think the way that we meet her at the beginning, quite sort of emotionally stoic and conservative, is a little bit more familiar of the British female sensibility. And I'm intrigued about how Leah is going to approach this as an actress and as really the central character of this revival of this new production. I think a lot is hinging inevitably on her performance. And not to sound like the discouraging mate of a popular restaurant, but I do have a fair few reservations. As always, though, I will reserve judgment until I see the show for myself. I will certainly be trying to plan a trip to head back to New York later this year to see this show as soon as I can. What does fall mean? What does fall 20? I know that it means autumn. I'm not being that slow. But is that like October? Is that November? Are we saying that to be deliberately vague or is something actually planned out here in terms of a timeline and they're just not revealing it yet? These are my questions. Oh, my God. Hey, it is now. The next day I'm editing this video and I realize there are three more things that I want to say. Unbelievably there is more to discuss about the upcoming Chess revival. Number one is that we didn't really talk about the Tony eligibility of it all. Obviously this is now already in a race alongside the already announced revival of Ragtime for best revival of a musical and I hope that the show is a critical success. I really do hope that they can redeem Chess and it can get what people have been calling the Merrily we roll along treatment, where a historic flop or perceived failure is suddenly turned into an artistic and box office triumph. Obviously that is what they are hoping for as well. Well, but at the very least I do think it's going to sell well. I think we've seen sort of the Great Gatsby box office effect where they don't have necessarily mainstream stars, but you could see a lot of enthusiasm at the box office these days for theatre kid fan favorites and I think the combination of Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit as well as Nicholas Christopher to the sensible audience members besides whoever else they're going to end up putting in this cast is going to deliver at the box office, at least for a limited time anyway. And speaking of Aaron and Nicolas, they are both going to be, I assume, considered leading roles in this show and they're going to have the Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard experience of going into the same category. But Lea Michele is going to be eligible for a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a musical for the first time in a long time because when she replaced in Funny Girl she was not Tony eligible and some people were saying like we should change the rules and make replacements eligible, which would be a logistical nightmare besides absolutely anything. Anything else. But this time now she will be Is Lea Michele going to get a Tony nomination alongside the likes of potentially Casey Levy and Kristin Chenoweth? Too much of this season has yet to be announced, but that could be happening. Leah could be singing at the Tonys again, this time as a nominee. Much to look forward to. Anyway, back to Mickey Jo from the past. I'm deeply curious to find out how naturalistic versus high concept this revival might be. The Lauren Lotaro as choreographer of it all is intriguing to me and since I did promise you speculation from me, I think it's still entirely conceivable that Solea Pfeiffer could be playing Svetlana alongside these three. She is a name who we are seeing working a lot on Broadway at the moment, from Hadestown to Moulin Rouge and if I absolutely had to commit to guessing a theatre that this is going to I guess the Majestic seems to be the one that would make the most sense. But the names that I am hearing more than anything else are are the Broadhurst or in fact the Schubert, despite Hell's Kitchen and Boop continuing to play at those. In any case, that is everything that we know so far about the upcoming Chess revival on Broadway. Make sure to go and check out that Wait in the Wings documentary when it is released soon. Make sure to head to Chess on Broadway. Was it chessonbroadway.com or chessbroadway.com I'm doing a horrible job of this right now. Chess broadway.com, no on no on people, chessbroadway.com if you want to sign up to access Priority Tickets. And I'm sure I'll be back on here talking about a little bit more if more major exciting revelations about this production unfold. But if they don't, then the next time you might hear me speaking about this is hopefully when I go to New York to see it for myself. To make sure you don't miss that review and the rest of my theatrical coverage. Between now and then, make sure you're subscribed right here on YouTube. Turn on that notification button so that YouTube lets you know every time I share a new video, which is daily at this point because there is a lot of exciting theatre news or go follow me on podcast platforms. I have been Mickey Jo, you have been presumably frazzled by the amount that I have had to say about this, but let in its chest and I'm very excited. Let me know how excited you are in the comment section down below. And as always, I hope that you enjoyed listening. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stagey Day. For 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.