#arqueete

we all know the “theme” of Chess is “what if these two characters were in love? :) isn’t it sad that some romances are short? :( :(” but the actual content of Chess is a combination of “do you see me? can you see me? am I real to you? god, I’m so lonely. will you stay with me? will you come back? are you going to leave? are you listening to me?” and “fuck it, I’ll do it myself” and also “haha wouldn’t it be fucked up if WE were the pawns in some larger game?” as the story unfolds, the audience squints past all the songs about how your boyfriend will break up with you eventually and realizes just how much work is being poured into rigging the world championship to have the most politically desirable outcome. then you get that beat at the end where it’s hammered in that this isn’t even really about chess. big reveal! the championship was a soft power tradeoff for a prisoner release or a hostage exchange or something else so far above the scope of some guys who are really good at a board game that all their personal struggles are reduced almost to irrelevance. it doesn’t matter if Anatoly wins or Freddie wins or Viigand wins or America wins or Russia wins. it’s a fucking game. there’s always next year.

but also: the stupid little personal struggles matter. they have to on a story level, because the audience doesn’t give a shit about the prisoner exchange. hell, the audience barely knows about the prisoner exchange. what the audience cares about is the characters, and what we’ve learned about the characters by the end of the musical is that they can’t win. they can’t beat this game. they’re not players, they’re (forgive me one more time for the chess metaphor that I am compelled to lean into) pawns. they’re too small to ever outsmart or outplay or evade their governments, the depersonalization of fame, or the machinations of history. the characters can’t beat the system - the system is too powerful - but they’re still people and people want things, so the characters can still have personal victories.

alright, you can’t have Anatoly defeat The Philosophical and Social Construct of the USSR. but what does he want? self-fulfillment, a divorce, and independence from the burden of national success or failure. can he get that? can he figure out a way to be Anatoly Sergievsky, Russian Man Who Is The Best At Chess (But Not Because He Is Russian)? Chess takes a shot at that angle in the West End version where Anatoly wins the championship - which reads as a betrayal! he’s choosing personal success over saving Florence’s father! - as a huge fuck you to the manipulations of Molokov and as the only act of honesty he feels capable of, but then he returns to Russia anyway, on his own terms. is that a win?

personally, I like that way more than him choosing to throw the championship, but both versions have their merits. this one has Anatoly self-actualize in the only way he can (selfishly, but he’s a deeply selfish man). the original Broadway version lets him throw the game as an act of sacrifice that he knows will be likely be futile, but he gets some character growth the second he chooses to express love selflessly. these are both victories for the audience because the character either succeeds at something he really wanted or grows as a person by breaking his policy of individualism to try to help someone else.

can you give any of the other characters what they want? Svetlana wants Anatoly to acknowledge that he’s hurt her and presumably for the Soviet government to stop jerking her and her family around to get her husband’s attention. she gets one of those things when Anatoly returns to Russia, but anything more comes at the cost of Anatoly’s character and the story is reluctant to make him a guy who sucks (for the record, Anatoly is a guy who sucks. do not date this man). Freddie wants success and attention, but the stakes of the story are the least personal for him. it’s not really interesting if Freddie gets what he wants because 1) he already has those things at the beginning of the musical, and 2) Chess does a frankly terrible job at creating investment in him as a character, so he gets slotted into the role of antagonist and therefore we only care about whether or not he’s winning if it inconveniences the protagonists. 

Florence wants some fucking respect, which she gets by linking up with Anatoly (Anatoly “Women Respecter” Sergievsky), and I suppose she also wants love. I’m not sure there’s a world in which you can set her up for romantic success when the lyricist starts undermining her relationship in LITERALLY the second song she sings about her relationship with Anatoly (Heaven Help My Heart - #1 is obviously Mountain Duet) and the musical is built around her doomed romance, so that’s a challenge I’m just not going to tackle. she also wants her father to be alive and safe, but that’s not a goal she’s pursuing, it’s something that’s imposed upon her. in the West End and Broadway versions, "your dad has been alive this whole time” is just something that Molokov makes up without doing anything to verify and she’s compelled to fall for it to varying degrees because not chasing that possibility down would make her a horribly selfish person.

does the story still work if she reunites with her father? I honestly can’t tell. I probably don’t know enough about how this version of Chess plays out to make a judgement. the period on the end of Chess is Florence realizing that she’s been played and strung along for this greater, almost unfathomable political game on a scale she cannot begin to engage with. her agency throughout this whole musical is undermined because she realizes that she really was manipulated because of her political identity, even after denying it to Freddie (”don’t you hate Soviets because of what they did to Hungary?” “no, fuck off”) and Molokov (”don’t you feel closer to other Eastern Europeans than Americans?” “no, fuck off”). her personal ties to the place where she was born were used against her and she lost her gamble on a life with Anatoly because of it. Florence can still “win” something from the exchange by getting her father back, but then what? she’s traded her lover for the dad she thought was dead her whole life? what do we do with that? are you sad for her? does she still sing a little romantic reprise? no matter what, it still feels very much like she’s been totally played and this is a consolation prize. at least Broadway Chess actually sets up the idea that she actively wants this part of her life back; if it’s going to work anywhere, it’d be there.

Broadway Anatoly can have his Nobody’s Side moment and say “fuck it, I’ll do it myself” and find Florence’s dad, but what the hell do you do with that? if he could find her “real” dad on his own, why did he go to Russia? if we’re going to put in the work and fight the government and solve all our problems, why doesn’t he figure out some way to get Svetlana and his brother and his brother’s family out of Russia? he already did it once, what’s with this half-assed giving up? if you want Chess to be less depressing and this is how you’re gonna do it, have him send a note to Florence through Mr. Vassy promising that he’ll be back. all of you, stop playing chess. get away from the platform that makes you a target for political manipulation. live normal lives and be together because you make each other happy.

I think Chess is more interesting when the characters are conscious of their position in Cold War theater and they’re reacting to that. I think the more interesting reactions come from the downsides to being a political pawn, otherwise you just get a bunch of Freddies. I also think there’s definitely a way (probably lots of ways. it’s fucking Chess) to end things on a hopeful note, but I don’t know if you can do that AND stay true to the themes of fame and pressure and depersonalization during the Cold War without giving the characters some sort of out from that environment.