Chess

“Chess” a coldwar 2.0 Russophobic screed, not helped by Abba’s noisy music or unintelligible lyrics

Nov 16, 2025 - May 3, 2026.
Produced by Tom Hulce, Robert Ahrens, The Shubert Organization and others.
“Chess.” Book by Danny Strong, based on an idea by Tim Rice. Music and lyrics by Benny Andersson, Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus. Directed by Michael Mayer.
https://chessbroadway.com/
Imperial Theatre, 249 West 45th St, NYC.

This play about a politically fraught chess match between an American and Russian champion in 1979 lasted only two months on Broadway in 1988, when Ronald Reagan was president. The time of the “evil empire.” (Plus ça change.) So maybe even then this Russophobic play was a wrong call.

A new script was written by Danny Strong, directed by Michael Mayer, but there is no indication of any significant change in the politics, just in some character roles. The music is not worthy of comment—noisy and repetitive – and the lyrics are trite, but the noise covers most of them. (Music and lyrics by Benny Andersson, Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus.)

Nicholas Chrisopher as Anatoly Sergievksy. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

The best part about the production is Nicholas Christopher who plays the Russian chess player Anatoly with taut intensity and has a thrilling operatic baritone. Aaron Tveit, the American player Freddie, is loud and uninteresting. Lea Michele, Florence, the chess strategist and love object of both, has a fine musical stage presence and belting voice.

But it’s the story that must be dissected as it deals with the conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It starts in 1979, four years after American troops fled Vietnam, a country which posed no threat to the U.S. but where it intervened with “advisors” in 1960 under John F. Kennedy and then massively under Lyndon Johnson, slaughtering millions of Vietnamese along the way. Because it didn’t like communism’s threat to corporate capitalism. (War is the way late-stage capitalists deal with challenges to the hegemony of the system.) The Soviet Union provided military and economic support to North Vietnam in its struggle against the U.S. and its vassal South Vietnam. This story of the major conflict of the time between the two powers is not mentioned.

Aaron Tveit as Freddie Trumper. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Perhaps the need to divert attention away from U.S. imperialism was why the first playwright Richard Nelson targeted the Soviets in “Chess” in the failed 1998 version.

In 1976, a few years before the 1979 setting of the play, the U.S. had backed a coup in Argentina that installed a military junta led by General Jorge Rafael Videla which prosecuted the Dirty War (1976-1983), state terrorism against suspected left-wing opponents, including extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances that murdered some 30,000. This is not mentioned.

Then there was the illegal Reagan Contra era military support of dictators in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the early 80s which I visited and wrote about, and then Cambodia, Grenada, the Philippines and more. I was in the Philippines in 1986 to witness the U.S. support of dictator Marcos. All before the 1988 play.

So, when the new playwright Danny Strong describes the U.S.-Soviet conflict as between democracy and communism, knowing the events of Vietnam, Argentina and many other countries where the U.S. supported dictators or attacked nationalist movements, it is clear that failure to recognize America’s imperialist history makes this play propaganda.

The story is that American and Russian chess champions are meeting for a world-class match. The American’s female strategic advisor had a brief affair with the Russian. Somehow, implausibly, the U.S. CIA and the Soviet KGB are interested in the match. Why? No credible reason. It could have been a normal love-conflict play except the writers turned it into a “we hate the Russians” play. And it bombs. Not a pun.

Aaron Tveit as Freddie Trumper and Lea Michele as Florence Vassy. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

The propaganda is routinely absurd. Anatoly, the Russian, is described as someone who lost his childhood to communists who took him from his family and made him a chess champion.

Freddie the American became a champion at age 11. Unless you think that happened overnight, he must have been trained from 6 or 7, a child, no? His father was a ne’er do well and his mother took lovers. Freddie was bipolar, a loudmouth and thinks chips were planted in his teeth. Guess he was taken from his family by some capitalists to learn chess and they didn’t care much about his mental health. So, tell me the difference. Besides Russians bad, Americans good.

Alexander (Bradley Dean), Anatoly’s life-long chess teacher, is (wink wink) reputed to be a KGB agent. Why would the KGB care about chess? For international prestige? It is known that the Soviets supported prodigies in chess (also ballet, music and sport), while Americans with talent but no money generally lost their dreams. So, you have to provide a nefarious reason for good social policy.

Then even more absurd is the part built around the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union aimed at curbing the arms race by limiting the number of nuclear weapons and delivery systems each country could have, SALT I in 1972 and SALT II in 1979.

The playwrights invent the implausible theory that unless the American throw the chess match in favor of the Russian (who may well win on his own), the Soviets will end the 1979 SALT negotiations. And Jimmy Carter needs the victory for his campaign. In fact, it was signed and submitted to the Senate for ratification but Carter withdrew it after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski later told a French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur in January 1998, that the U.S. had armed Al Quaeda in the hope it would bring down Afghanistan’s pro-Russian secular government and pull in the Russians. It would be their Vietnam.

The United States was involved in Afghanistan from October 7, 2001, until August 30, 2021, a military presence of nearly 20 years. Whose Vietnam? But both sides observed the arms limits anyway.

A subsequent intermediate range missiles (INF) treaty was signed in 1987, but President Trump cancelled it in 2019. Strong makes a few weak jokes about anti-health czar Robert F. Kennedy and dementia-challenged Joe Biden, but though SALT was an essential part of the story line, he does not mention Trump’s killing the INF treaty. Because the U.S. not the Russians did it?

He manages to get more digs in by making Florence Vassy, Freddie’s strategist, a Hungarian who as a child was saved during the 1956 uprising against Russian control by being handed over a fence. Twice we see the same videos of the uprising. In case you missed it the first time. ( Was that you, director Mayer?) Costa Rica, Tibet and Syria, all targets of U.S. bombings or coups that same year, get no screen time. Nor does Guatemala, whose democratic government the CIA overthrew in 1954, leading to the murder of several hundred thousand peasants and decades of military rule.

Lea Michele as Florence Vassy and Nicholas Christopher as Anatoly Sergievksy. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

A CIA agent (Sean Allan Krill), with the nice upper-class name of Walter de Courcey, and the reputed KGB guy agree that the American will lose the match so the Soviets can claim victory. But Freddie defaults. Anatoly wants to stay with Florence, but the U.S. refuses his entrance and revoke’s her visa. So, they decamp to the UK.

Anatoly is leaving Russia because he loves Florence, but the Brits apparently require him to say on a video it’s “for freedom.” You wonder about Strong’s grasp of basic alliance history. The CIA and the British MI6 are tight collaborators, and the UK is a longtime American vassal. Very unlikely the Brits would welcome anyone the Americans blockedPHOTO lk24123f Hannah Cruz as Svetlana, photo Matthew Murphy.

The KGB entices Anatoly’s estranged and, we must believe, oppressed wife Svetlana (a fine Hannah Cruz in good voice) to get him to return. “Don’t you want to be back as the toast of society…greatest parties?” And Anatoly was complaining that, with all the traveling, he didn’t have a real life. Turns out she was not only going to great parties but also having affairs. This is obviously something that happens only in communist countries where big-time entertainment figures travel a lot and sometimes mess up their home lives. (Never in Hollywood!)

And finally, there are the NATO “Abel Archer” exercises in Eastern Europe. With Reagan’s talk of the evil empire promoting heightened tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact (it’s Reagan’s idea of diplomacy), the Russians are spooked. Apparently, Nov 12, 1983 was the date they might have launched a preemptive strike. It is considered by some to be one of the closest moments the world came to nuclear war. But the USSR was run by steadier heads than the Deep State warmongers controlling the American government.

The dancers. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

BTW, I haven’t mentioned the uninspiring choreography by Lauren Latarro, some kicks, some acrobatics by players in gray suits and then a colorful Bangkok scene where the women (not the men) strip to their underwear. As long as a play is politically reactionary, it might as well also be sexist.

Since the collective West has banned Russian competitors from all kinds of international contests in the sophisticated belief that will make Russia bend the knee, I assume we will be spared a contemporary sequel. But “Chess” ought to be studied as a prime example of U.S. cold war cultural propaganda.

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