TV REVIEW: It's Still Checkmate for Chess in Concert
Newsday
June 17, 2009
By Linda Winer
THE SHOW
"Chess in Concert"
WHEN & WHERE
Wednesday at 8 on WNET/13
REASON TO WATCH
For some, "Chess" has always been the one that got away. This was the show - more than a dozen years before "Mamma Mia!" - meant to catapult ABBA's Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus from Europop superstars to musical-theater composers. But director Michael Bennett ( "A Chorus Line") was secretly diagnosed with AIDS before the London premiere in 1986, his modernist concept replaced by mega-musical British director Trevor Nunn ("Cats").
By the time the derailment got to Broadway two years later, the supposedly anti-American slant of the Cold War book by Tim Rice ( "Evita") about a chess championship had been retilted for Broadway consumption by American playwright Richard Nelson. And "Chess" flopped here.
SO WHAT NOW?
Rice and company revisited their creation, which had since achieved cult-classic status, for a concert last year in London's Royal Albert Hall with a symphony orchestra, 100-member chorus, animated projections and heavily emoting dancers.
The concert, also released this week on CD and DVD, seems intended as an audition for revival. Josh Groban is vocally impressive and extremely sweet as the Russian chess player who defects for love of the Hungarian-born American artist-manager - delivered by Idina Menzel ("Wicked") with her gleaming, insinuating voice and the required surfeit of wailing.
Adam Pascal ("Rent") does what he can to make us care about the bratty McEnroe of an American champ, the other third of the political-romantic triangle.
BOTTOM LINE
There are tantalizing moments, especially the folk-tinged music for the Russians and mock Italianate choruses. But the show is bloated with chunks of generic pop-opera screamers, bombastic orchestral interludes and retrofitted history lessons. The Broadway game for "Chess" remains over. It's grandiose but still not grand.
GRADE B-
HOME