The received wisdom is that the book has always been the problem with Chess, if only—as so many have attempted—the book could be fixed…

But, as the much-anticipated revival of Sir Tim Rice and Abba’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’ 1986 musical on Broadway reveals, Chess is its own cabinet of curiosities, and it delights in displaying them all on stage in real-time as brashly as its two peacocking competitors, the Russian Anatoly Sergievksy (Nicholas Cristopher) and the American Freddie Trumper (Aaron Tveit).

We barely see any chess played between them in this almost three-hour musical endurance test (Imperial Theatre, booking to May 3, 2026). But rather like a chess match, the show (directed by Michael Mayer, with a new book by Danny Strong), stares down each one of its own structu

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