‘Chess’

★★

“Bring earplugs! Bring Kleenex! Prepare to succumb!” said in The Washington Post . The musical Chess is back on Broadway for the first time since it flopped in 1988, and its “belty and synth-tastic score,” written by lyricist Tim Rice and two members of ABBA, has probably never enjoyed a louder or more spirited performance. Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit, and Nicholas Christopher co-star as the three points in the story’s central love triangle, and all three deliver in the handful of “blow-your-hair-back, 1980s-style rock ballads” that most ticket buyers come to hear. Still, Chess has always been “a concept album in search of a script,” its score generating two 1984 pop hits before anyone ever attempted to put it onstage. Rice’s “obviously bizarre” concept will always resist a sens