Chess: 1990 US Tour Production

This was the sixth version of Chess that I watched, after the 2008 Royal Albert Hall Chess in Concert, the 1990 Sydney production, the 1990 Long Beach production, and the original 1986 London production (which I only had minor thoughts on, as it's very similar to the 2008 Royal Albert Hall version).

After having a look at the original London production of Chess, I was going to simply write a big essay with some final overall thoughts on this musical and leave a little note about that one at the top. But then, when I was going to go finish that essay and move on with my life, I accidentally wound up also watching the 1990 US tour. This one’s Broadway-based, so I was kind of expecting it to be more or less like Long Beach, in the way that original London was more or less like the 2008 Royal Albert Hall version – the same story but differently staged and with some insignificant tweaks or cuts or additions to how it’s told. But no, turns out this is yet another vastly different version that just kind of completely rewrites most of it. Here I thought I’d experienced the four major strains of Chess so I could start commenting on it as a whole, but nope. I was left with a deep sense of paranoia that absolutely any production I did not watch would be liable to be a counterexample to any statement I might make about Chess in general. Tim Rice, why have you cursed me so.

Where the Long Beach version actually successfully sold the romance and made it kind of cute, this one managed to have the absolute worst Florence/Anatoly romance, hands down. In the Long Beach version, Florence and Anatoly have some banter before “Terrace Duet” where they’re both laughing and enjoying themselves; in the tour version, instead of that, Anatoly tells her he has no intention of apologizing and arranged this meeting just so he could get to know her, she’s pissed about it, he snaps at her, and she goes out to the terrace and starts to sing the song. After the bit about how the meeting doesn’t matter anymore he approaches her, she tries to move away, and he just grabs her and kisses her anyway. Then, when Freddie arrives, Florence tells him she’s so sorry and it’s all her fault, as if Anatoly wasn’t the one forcing this on her. Later, Anatoly calls her at the hotel, and she tells him not to call again, so he physically comes to see her instead. In general, he just will not take no for an answer. I had seen this Anatoly given the fandom nickname ‘Creepatoly’ but I assumed that just meant the actor’s performance came across as a bit unfortunately creepy, whereas he has actually just been entirely rewritten to be a total creep. Please throw this entire man in the garbage.

As a result, instead of being indifferent to the romance, here I just find it deeply enraging that Florence wants anything to do with him at all and am rooting for her to kick him in the nuts, but instead I have to watch her singing all the same love songs no matter how little sense they make, and I hate it. (Here, rather than helping Anatoly defect, Florence is about to fly home when Anatoly just follows her and insists that while she thought they had no future, he can’t see a future without her (so obviously she should just give in, I guess?), and then somehow she launches into “Heaven Help My Heart”?! Including the line about how she never planned on “doing all this for the love of a man”, when she has literally done nothing to facilitate this, only repeatedly told Anatoly to please leave her alone? God. Who wrote this version and why did they think this made any sense at all.)

Meanwhile, this version does cut Freddie’s misogyny verse… but it doesn’t replace it with anything, and as a result it feels very much like something is missing: him kind of briefly snapping at her in a way that’s honestly less bad than some of his previous remarks still has her react as if he just crossed some whole new line. It made perfect sense the misogynistic rant finally gave Florence the nerve to leave, but not really as much so here. I’m definitely not opposed to cutting the misogyny verse; it makes sense for Freddie’s particular issues and all, but it is super yikes, and I’m surprised cutting it isn’t more common when every production makes cuts and rewrites to other stuff left and right – but you do kind of need its role in the scene served by something. Have him yell something more vicious about her relationship with Anatoly there or something, you know? (I also don’t think I’d have cut the “I should have guessed, woman / that if pressed, woman / you’re on nobody’s side but your own” bit, personally, since that sets up his issues a little while staying within more regular asshole territory, and I like the callback to “Nobody’s Side”, but that’s just me.)

Also, here Freddie straight-up cheated at chess – he staged the walkout so the game would be suspended and he’d have more time to figure out how to force a draw in a situation where he was down some material. Any Freddie who cares about chess would never.

In this one, nobody ever suggests Florence’s father might be alive, despite slightly more setup about her father being a famous chess player who wrote a book that inspired Anatoly. Florence and Anatoly plan to ditch the final match and elope so they can live together somewhere; however, when Anatoly goes to inform Freddie about this and congratulate him on keeping his title, Freddie tells him not to, that he doesn’t want to win the title by default and Anatoly won’t be able to live with himself if he quits and Florence must have put him up to this. When Anatoly refuses, Freddie taunts him, saying he’s just scared he’ll lose. It’s almost sort of a little bit like “Talking Chess” but not really; no because I love chess, no Freddie having gotten over anything. (This is one of the versions that put the full “Pity the Child” just after “Florence Quits”, so that’s not something that just happened, either.)

And then Anatoly does show up for the match (but still late, as in all these Broadway-derived endings). Florence isn’t lyrically involved in “Endgame” at all; Svetlana berates him as he plays, and he just responds with the original “Nothing you have said is revelation…” verse rather than the Sydney/Long Beach bit about thinking of Florence and her father and not wanting to betray them (of course, given her father is just plain dead here, that wouldn’t have made sense as is). Then he says he’s found out his only obligation, to chess… right before he apparently throws the match anyway, talking about how I cannot go on hurting all the people who have trusted me. This is a bit strange, because as far as I could recall, in this version nobody had actually asked him to lose the match! I guess what he’s trying to accomplish by losing is to stop the Soviet government threatening his family, but I’m pretty sure Molokov at some point literally stated that they don’t care if he wins or loses, they just want him home? All in all, I’m not quite sure what the point of doing that was once he had shown up, other than to obligatorily have the Broadway outcome. Afterwards, Anatoly tells Florence that he realized he didn’t know who he would be in her life and that he ultimately is a chess player, which I guess is fair, but then why not win the match? How was he betraying anyone any less by losing than by winning? Mayyyybe he didn’t actually throw the match and just made a genuine mistake there as he was thinking about how he can’t go on hurting people? I don’t know.

After they have their goodbye and Anatoly leaves, Molokov offers Florence a seat on a plane and an apartment in Moscow to just stay there as Anatoly’s mistress, which she refuses (“Would this make me Anatoly’s mistress, or the mistress of the Soviet Union?”). Then Walter arrives and explains the whole political plot to Florence (we’ve seen basically none of that at all before this point), in which the Soviets made some kind of vague handwaved concession in return for the West making Anatoly’s life miserable until he returned. Thus, the plot twist is that everything about Anatoly’s difficulties, including the guy telling him his nephew was injured (which was a lie), was orchestrated by the US government, not the Soviet one. Then Walter tells her Freddie’s waiting outside in a limo for her – he needs her inspiration! – and Walter took the liberty of packing her luggage for her. She angrily tells him to bring her luggage back and get out of her sight… and then sings “Someone Else’s Story”, which is actually a choice I kind of like? Florence wishing she could have warned herself to leave Anatoly? Not all of the lyrics make total sense for that context but I can get behind it, especially with this garbage Anatoly.

All in all, Freddie is somehow the most sympathetic character in this version, but mostly because everyone else is either terrible or inexplicably in love with Anatoly, who is terrible. I can’t say I was a big fan; I think it makes some decently interesting structural choices here and there like the placement of “Someone Else’s Story”, I kind of appreciate having some vague hint of “Talking Chess” in there even if this Freddie doesn’t care about chess, but Creepatoly just made me deeply annoyed with pretty much every song that had Anatoly or Florence in it, which is most of the songs.

(Or, wait. One of the other Russians, who gets like five lines, is Nikolai, who is just a wholesome chess nerd who wants to play against Anatoly and get Freddie’s autograph. He is the most sympathetic character. He cares about chess!)

Page last modified April 1 2025 at 00:33 UTC

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