special interest hotspot

So this my personal opinion; other people have historically loved the Danny Strong book! Thus far, I have not.

I do want to preface my opinion by saying that thus far, the Strong book has only been seen in workshops. I love Beetlejuice the musical; had I encountered the D.C. workshop first instead of the Broadway remount, I would not have believed it could be good. Long history of musicals absolutely sucking in workshops and then turning out okay on Broadway.

For me, I have hated the Strong book so far because of its its characterization choices, dated political jokes, efforts to make the show a political thriller, and its absolutely abhorrent and offensive depiction of mental illness. For ease, I refer to the 2018 Kennedy Center production as Kencen, and the 2022 concert as Choncert.

For starters, characterization in Chess has always been mutable. There is no such thing as OOC when it comes to Chess, only choices I like less than others. However, I do think the characterization choices in Strong Chess make the show weaker. Freddie ends up coming off as the most sympathetic character, which Should Not Be. Anatoly struggles with depression and paranoia in this book, which could be really interesting, except he's a boring dick. He has no charm; it's just all paranoia and depression. He tells us in the first act that his wife was spying on him, which turns out to be a lie, and he refuses to believe she loved him even as she is begging him because their children might get sent to the gulag. Florence describes him as sweet and kind and thoughtful, and this is not evident in this slightest. Florence is very girlboss emotionally mature which is...very not Florence or especially interesting. She is the caretaker for Freddie, and in Choncert, she does something that immediately tanks all sympathy for her.

She steals Freddie's psychiatric meds, causing him to spiral and lose the match. The show does not dig into this, nor bring it up again. It's just a baffling choice to give your supposed sympathetic female lead.

In addition, Florence/Anatoly falls completely flat in a new, unique way than previous Chesses. In Choncert, there is a whole scene about them having an affair in Rome a couple years before canon (while Anatoly was married and Florence was with Freddie) and they sing YOU AND I LIKE THIRTY MINUTES INTO ACT ONE??? INSANE??? YOU DO NOT DESERVE THAT SONG YET. This further tanks my liking of these characters, as they've both been carrying on behind their partners' backs for years. Here is a video of One Night In Rome.

https://www.tumblr.com/hellyrigs/703512439768121344/the-new-scene-in-chess-dec-12-2022-one-night?source=share

Because of these changes, Freddie comes across as the most sympathetic main character??? Somehow?? He's explicitly struggling with mental illness here, either schizophrenia/bipolar depending on whether it's Kencen/Choncert (we'll get to that.) He's introduced singing A Taste of Pity by himself while struggling from a panic attack, and Florence shows up and tells him "You have to take your pills, Freddie." His paranoia is actually objectively correct here, as the Soviets ARE using underhanded tactics to get him to lose, and Florence IS cheating on him with Anatoly. You should never, ever make Freddie justified and correct in Chess. When you've done that, something has gone wrong. I don't think it's a coincidence that when Kencen sparked a little surge of Chess content, it was disproportionately about Freddie. This was definitely because of Raul Esparza's charisma, but Ramin Karimloo has an even more rabid fanbase, and there was very little Anatoly content. He's also not as horribly misogynistic and abusive here as he is in other Chesses (you can even read it as Florence abusing him, which. What. What is happening.) Yet, despite the fact that he's softened, the other characters are even WORSE to him than usual. Florence is extremely aggressive and non-sympathetic about his mental health issues from the very start of the show (the pill stealing is just the icing on the cake) Florence straight up tells him in act two that "You're incapable of love. You can't even love yourself," which is just. In a Chess where Freddie is properly an asshole, sure, say that! In THIS? It just all hits really bad.

I also haven't dug into how Svetlana's depiction makes Anatoly even worse. He says she was spying on him, accuses her of brainwashing his children to hate him, yet when we see her, the first thing she talks about is how much of a nightmare life for the past four years has been. Molokov threatens to lock her children in an orphanage and send her to die in a Siberian gulag if she fails to bring Anatoly home. She tries so hard--and all Anatoly does is call her a liar and say she never loved him. It makes him extremely unsympathetic.

I haven't even begun to dig into the dialogue yet. Dialogue in Chess has rarely been its strong point (in all my dealings with Florence, I never once made one good move) but it's rarely been boring. Tim Rice has a very distinctive awkward janky style to his dialogue that is kinda charming, even if it's not good. Richard Nelson, the Broadway libretto writer, is genuinely excellent at expressing character with dialogue. Chess pa Svenska, which had a new Swedish libretto written by Björn Ulvaeus, Lars Rudolfsson, and Jan Mark, has a scene so good it could fully stand alone as a ten minute play. Danny Strong's dialogue however...does not work for me. Here are a couple of actual lines from Strong. These were all painstakingly transcribed by me.

The Arbiter: Welcome to the the first -- and depending on how tonight goes -- last Cold War musical. On this very stage you will encounter chess grandmasters, CIA operatives, Thai prostitutes, and Ronald Reagan. Not necessarily in that order. At times our story may seem ludicrous. Sometimes it is. After all, this is a musical. But I should warn you some of this crazy shit actually happened.

"He was a child chess prodigy by the age of eleven. Which may or may not have lead to clinical narcissism and undiagnosed bipolar disorder."

Freddie: Where have you been? I need you. I love you, and I need you. Florence: Yeah, til you're feeling normal, now take your pills! Freddie: No!

Freddie: By superior training, I'm assuming that you're referring to fact that they're snatched from their families as little kids? Then trained like rats in a cage their entire childhood? The Communist system is as cruel to its chess players as it is to its people. Florence: Come on Freddie, let's go. Freddie: No, I'm fine, I'm fine. With Anatoly Sergievsky, the KGB is going to make him disappear just like Boris Ivanovich. A grandmaster vanishes off the face of the planet, and you don't even care about it because you're too busy bashing me! (Music stops) Freddie: Sporting? Are the Communists sporting? And you call me crazy! Well fuck you! Fuck you all, big and small.

Freddie: I don't blame my father for leaving, but I still hate him for it. Anatoly: He doesn't deserve Florence, she's too good for him. Freddie: I really do love her, I just don't know how to show it. Anatoly: I wish I could feel warmth. I wish I could feel anything at all. Freddie: I'd give it all to just not have my blood race all the time, to not think the walls are being bugged, to not think the KGB is trying to blow up my plane, I can't trust anybody. Anatoly: I've been a prisoner of chess all my life. I never had a childhood. I don't want to go home because I have no home. I have no identity. Freddie: I'm not evil, she [???] I'm not a human being. Anatoly: I can't beat him, he's too good. Freddie: He can't beat me, I'm too good. Molokov: Yes Anatoly, play with his mind. Freddie: Don't fall for his cheap mindgames. Florence: Don't fall for it Freddie, he's desperate Walter: Cue the light buzzing. Freddie: Ignore the light buzzing. Anatoly: I dream of home and freedom. I dream of defecting, but I'm too much of a coward to defect. Freddie: I was the US champion at age eleven. Probably should have locked up my chessboard. I hate chess. I hate life scratching me. I wanna die. Anatoly: I wanna die. I don't know my children nor my wife, I never have, just as my parents knew me. Walter: Louder! Freddie: Buzzing. Florence: Damn it! Molokov: He made a mistake, it's working Anatoly. Walter: Louder!

Florence: I don't know, baby, I have a bad feeling about this interview. You should pull out. Anatoly: If I don't do it, it will look like I'm afraid of him. Florence: He's gonna come after you. He still wants to be in the game, even if he's not playing you, he still wants to play you. Anatoly: We both know why he's here. He wants to get you back. Florence: The last thing in the world I want is Freddie Trumper. You don't have do this interview to prove anything to me. Anatoly: I have to do this interview to prove to the world that I'm not here by a forfeit. Florence: Oh God, it's happening again! Anatoly: What is? Florence, continuing to make Choices: My life is being destroyed by chess, why can't I love a banker or a gardener or anybody else. Anatoly: You're all I want. I promise. Anddddd the championship Florence: Of course.

I just find this dialogue to be very bland, boring, and at times like a bootleg Joss Whedon. It's all kinda like this--too jokey and cynical and not genuine. I find it very jarring. Whatever Chess has been throughout its history, it has always been genuine. I feel like all these lines are written for the most immediate reaction, for the punchline, as opposed to building something true and beautiful.

Let's compare two similar sections of dialogue, one from Danny Strong, one from Richard Nelson.

Walter: It's not what I want, it's what I have to give. A video! I think you'll enjoy. Freddie: Unless it's lesbian porn, I'm not interested. vs Reporter: What a beautiful suite! What do you think of Budapest so far, Mr. Trumper? Freddie: Anyone with legs like that can call me Freddie. (She uncrosses her legs.) That’s a joke, okay? (He gets up.) Jesus Christ, you been here how long? A couple of days! And already you’ve lost your sense of humor. See what Communism does to you?

One of these is a punchline. It's a quick quip that doesn't really tell you anything more about the character. It doesn't come up again. Freddie harassing the reporter tells us a lot about him. He wants her to like him, he wants praise, he wants to be puffed up. He wants her to laugh at his jokes, and he wants to be told he's funny. He wants proof that he can get a woman after Florence walked out on him. Meanwhile, I don't think the lesbian porn moment tells us anything other than that Freddie watches lesbian porn. A lot of the moments in the show are like this. Quips are not inherently bad--but the whole show is mostly made out of quips.

I also really really really hate how this show handles politics and political humor. The 2022 Choncert leaned really hard on (now dated) political humor mostly from The Arbiter, including jokes about Freddie's last name. It had a big imbalance of jokes over drama, and they again, never felt genuine.

This show is also just extremely extremely MURICA in how it handles the Soviet Union, far more than the actual original American production literally written during the Cold War. The Soviet Union in this production is a CARTOON--Anatoly is frequently threatened or worried about being killed if he loses at chess. The Russian chess champion before him, Boris Ivanovich, is heavily implied to have been killed for losing to Trumper. Strong. Buddy. You can look up what happened to the famous 1980s Russian chess players. Most of them are still alive in Russia! Even the ones who defected didn't get disappeared! They didn't get sent to the Chess Player Vat!

The stakes also just become RIDICULOUS in this version. We begin with chess players getting murdered for being bad at chess, and we end with RUSSIA MOBILIZING THEIR MILITARY BECAUSE ANATOLY WINS THE CHAMPIONSHIP. In this universe, the outcomes of SALT II and the 1983 nuclear weapon crisis are explicitly impacted by fucking chess!! SALT II falls apart because Anatoly defects!!! It's so stupid!!!! It ends up making it so that the Soviet Union is willing to nuke the world because they lost at chess. A large part of the second act involves the US doing training exercises that the USSR see as a threat, so they demand Anatoly lose at chess, or else they mobilize. It is so stupid!!!! Just such bad history!!!

The timeline and characters of the show are also negatively impacted by the increased focus on politics! We now have a four year time gap over intermission, from 1979 to 1983, and it sure doesn't feel like it with the characters. It's jarring because with the emotional state of the characters, it feels like it's been a couple months, not four years. And a couple months can work in Chess! But not if it's really four years, and we haven't put in the work to understand how the characters would necessarily change because of it. Molokov is now really high up in the KGB, and he's just a cartoon. Walter comes across as a better person because he is the one in the Waltokov relationship going "holy shit let's not blow up the world because of chess." The dynamic of the KGB and CIA being equally bad is utterly lost. Politics take focus over people in this Chess, and not for the better in the slightest.

Especially because Florence gets her dad back??? It's so so so jarring because it's a really out of place happy ending, and her father was not a focus for this Florence. Long Beach Chess made Florence getting her dad back work, but that was with very specific choices. This Chess has not made those choices. We also just do not have any emotional attachment to her father, so this big happy ending just falls utterly flat.

Now we get to the part of the show that makes me actually angry. The depiction of mental illness with Freddie Trumper. Everything else, I do not like, but it just makes me roll my eyes. The mental illness stuff makes me blindingly angry. By giving Freddie a diagnosed, specific illness, now it comes across like his asshole behavior is exclusively because of that illness, that Florence is right to leave her mentally ill partner who can barely function without her. He loses the first match because of sensory issues (he can't focus with the lights buzzing.) His medication is treated as a magic trick that automatically fixes him (he takes his pills and instantly calms down.)

And again!!! Florence steals his pills!!! She takes his vital medication from him!!! Here is a video of that.

https://www.tumblr.com/hellyrigs/703555453692624896/another-bad-moment-from-chess-dec-12-2022-no?source=share

Also the two productions thus far have alternatively described him as bipolar or schizophrenic, and they write him the exact same with both, so they're just flat up conflating two different mental illnesses without any care.

Danny Strong won an Emmy for Dopesick; listening to his Chess, it's hard to believe he knows how drugs work.

There are a few things I like in Strong Chess. Opening with US vs USSR is a striking choice, certainly better than starting with Story of Chess. Freddie hitting Florence with "Do you wanna fuck him?" right before Budapest is Rising is effective. Florence risking getting deported if she doesn't keep Freddie in line has the potential to be compelling.

However, I just hate it. I don't like it. I wish it wasn't the book for the revival. Again, they could fix it, it could be better. But here are my reservations as of now. I also worry that this will become the New Fandom Chess, or that this version could replace previous productions in licensing. I doubt those things would happen, but I still fear them.