Overview: a fictional account of Cold War politics during the World Chess Championships. Chess as a metaphor for war and byzantine politics form the backdrop, but what’s really important are the human relationships.
There are two different album versions: the original Black concept album and the newer White In Concert version. Black has inferior sound quality to White, probably due to the inferior recording equipment in the 80s. They differ in some insignificant (and some definitely not insignificant) ways. I'm going to review them both simultaneously, because some of my commentary only makes sense when compared side by side (or in opposition, since this IS a musical about chess).
Highlights: taken purely as a collection of songs, Chess is pretty good. There are no songs that I actively dislike listening to (even if a few have themes I virulently disagree with, but I'll get to those later).
Nobody's Side - if I could have only one song from the entire musical, it would be this one. Two decades before Elphaba sang Defying Gravity (and three before Elsa sang Let It Go), Florence sang about breaking free of expectations in Nobody's Side (ironically, I prefer Elaine Paige in the Black album to Idina Menzel in the White album). It's less triumphant and more cynical than other thematically similar songs, but Florence realizing that she can choose independence and self-care over an abusive relationship in a song I can sing is everything I want out of a musical.
Heaven Help My Heart - I'm a sucker for Florence songs and for love songs, so Heaven Help My Heart gets me right in the feels. Like Florence, it’s beautiful but a little cynical, acknowledging that reason and emotion have little to do with each other and eventually reason will end the emotional thrill of a new romance. It’s an excellent reflection of Florence’s emotional journey up until this point, not as bitter as in Nobody’s Side but not entirely hopeful either. It does bother me that this song places the focus squarely on Florence and her self-perceived inability to hold Anatoly’s interest when Anatoly just abandoned his wife and children.
One Night In Bangkok - if you are a child of the 80s this is a song you probably know. It was something of a one hit wonder, and I remember hearing it on the radio--though not having any idea about its origin. I heard it recently, flipping through an oldies station, and I actually tried to loop it because I forgot I wasn't listening to the album. It's a bit of an ear worm, and the lyrics are problematic with regards to colonialism and sex work. But if you're listening to it for the sake of nostalgia, you're probably not worried about that.
Difficult and Dangerous Times - this song explains the Cold War backdrop: Russia and the United States are busy brandishing the threat of a nuclear apocalypse at each other and the World Chess Championships are a chance for nations to compete on technically neutral ground without starting a war--like a couple of school boys told to shake hands and stop fighting, but they both try to out squeeze the other. The song wraps it up in a fun ensemble song that sounds like it also involves a cool dance number. If I were going to try to explain the Cold War to someone I would say it was like this song, with nukes.
The Arbiter - an awesome 80s glam rock song. Nuff said. Well, not quite. It’s a character song with no real relevance to the plot since the Arbiter serves more as a narrator than a character, but it’s fun to listen to. Also, somewhere on the internet, there is a video of one of the European performances of Chess. If you enjoy watching attractive European men in leather pants singing and dancing without a shirt, this is the video for you. I would link it, but I can no longer find it.
The Story of Chess - so White opens with this one and Black uses it to close, not that it makes a difference to the story either way. The closest thing to a low point in the album, it's an ensemble/chorus song that tells an anecdotal origin of the game of chess. According to the song, it was a way for an Indian prince to mansplain to his mother why he had to kill his brother. It then proceeds to whitesplain European appropriation and “perfection” of the game. It's not really all that offensive, it's just unthinkingly Euro-centric.
Plot Specifics: So, before we get into spoiler territory, I want to talk a little bit about the two versions and their relationship to the plot. As much as I prefer Black (despite its poor sound quality, in comparison to White), the fact that it’s a “concept album” means that the plot (particularly in the second half) is pretty...opaque. White has fewer plot gaps between songs, most noticeable in The Deal (No Deal) and Embassy Lament, as well as songs written specifically to fill in the gaps (Anatoly and the Press and The Interview).
White also diverges pretty significantly from Black, at least in terms of character development, in the second half.
Okay, last call for people who don’t want spoilers! Go listen to the version of your choice (or both, I definitely recommend both) and come back. I’ll wait.
Are you back? Awesome!
This is where we meet our major players:
The American/Freddy - a poorly disguised caricature of Bobby Fischer, the American chess player is a walking red flag of entitlement. He gets a tragic backstory to explain his misogyny, but he’s the jerk that you love to hate. Black doesn’t give him a name, so he’s just “The American”, but in White he gets to be Fredrick “Freddy” Trumper (wow, that’s a shockingly prescient last name, considering current political events). I’ll be referring to him as Freddy from now on, because I like characters to have actual names.
Florence (Vassy) - Freddy’s manager (the musical calls her his “second”), her job is to keep him in check (as much as possible), do press conferences, and run damage control (she does a lot of damage control). Florence also has a tragic backstory in the form of a (presumably) deceased father, but I’ll get into that more later. In Black, the relationship between Florence and Freddy is ambiguous. Are they in a romantic relationship? Is she some sort of manager/mother figure? (gross) Their relationship is clearly not just professional, and it is equally clearly emotionally abusive. White makes their relationship definitively romantic (but still abusive), which...I have mixed feelings about.
As far as I’m concerned, though, Florence is the main character, and the men are just there to support her story (the plot has other ideas, however).
The Russian/Anatoly Sergievsky - the Russian chess player, like Freddy, doesn’t get a name in Black, but is Anatoly Sergievsky in White. He is also a walking red flag of male entitlement, though his is much more subtle than Freddy and he is much more sympathetic (mostly). His backstory isn’t really relevant until the second half, when it shows up with a vengeance.
(Alexander) Molokov - Anatoly’s manager and Florence’s Russian counterpart, also an operative for the KGB. Of the characters who show up in the first half, he’s the only one without a story arc. As antagonists go, he’s a good one, full of polite menace and schemes.
Svetlana (Sergievsky) - Anatoly’s wife, left entirely unmentioned until the last few moments of the first half in White (she’s not even mentioned until the second half in Black). We’ll definitely be talking more about her.
The first Act opens in Merano, a small little Italian town that’s mostly excited for the event because of the influx of tourists and foreign money--like the Olympics (Merano). In White, it’s established that Freddy is in this for the money and that he enjoys playing the villain to drum up interest--and therefore a higher price tag. It’s also here that we receive confirmation that Freddy and Florence are, in fact, romantically involved (Commie Newspapers). Freddy makes headlines by being arrogant and positively offensive, then attacking a reporter who questioned whether his relationship to Florence was entirely professional. He stalks off leaving Florence holding the bag (Press Conference). In Black this scene is only implied to have occurred.
Afterwards, Molokov is ecstatic, declaring that someone so erratic cannot possibly be serious enough to be as good as his reputation, but Anatoly ignores him. He knows that the only way to really tell will be by playing (Molokov and Anatoly/The Russian and Molokov). After Molokov leaves, Anatoly gets a solo monologue about how his talent has led him to success, but has also left him friendless, since he can’t be sure who cares about him and who is just a sycophant trying to attach themselves to his rising star. This leaves him determined not to trust anyone (Where I Want To Be). I’d feel more sorry for him if I didn’t know he included his wife and children in that calculation.
The Olympic parallels continue with an opening ceremony and some political posturing (Difficult and Dangerous Times). In White, corporate sponsors try to sell chess related merchandise. I think there was a dig somewhere in there about crass commercialism, but it really doesn’t come up again except in the form of Freddy’s continuing interest in money.
The first match occurs and we get an instrumental theme that will carry us through the musical, signaling steadily intensifying conflict and selfish resolution. Played here, it starts off understated and then grows to a startling and sudden climax. Freddie apparently walked off (according to Quartet) and abandoned the game. I did a little research here, and it turns out that Freddie flipped the board, forcing a replay, but that’s never explicitly stated in the songs. Also, actual chess matches have a running record of moves (probably for exactly that reason), so throwing a temper tantrum like that wouldn’t actually change the state of play.
And now we come to Quartet, the first of the group songs, where we get to hear how the characters’ musical themes interact. I’ll be honest, it took me a while to like this song. The first time I listened to it, it was just noise, as all the characters try to talk over each other (which was not helped by the poor sound quality in Black). I had to listen to it multiple times to tease out each thread of conversation full of thinly veiled threats and polite lies. Again I prefer Elaine Paige and her smooth-as-cream performance here over Idina Menzel’s overt snark, but your mileage may vary. We’re going to come back to this song in Adaptation Corner, but for now just note that the song has some lines that are problematic in both Black and White for different reasons.
As it turns out, Freddie’s temper tantrum was, according to him, faked. Just his way of throwing the Russians off their game--though he never bothered to tell Florence his plans, leaving her (again) to clean up the mess. Freddy gaslights Florence by telling her that she's not being supportive and that her father would be disappointed in her. At this point, Florence breaks into her solo where she declares that she's done being someone else's emotional support system (Nobody’s Side).
Afterwards, Florence decides to be a professional about the whole thing (still doing damage control) and arranges a meeting between Freddy and Anatoly. Predictably, because he's a jerk, Freddy fails to make an appearance, leaving Florence to deal with the fall out.
Okay, so can anyone familiar with musical tropes guess what happens when two characters of different genders are left alone together unexpectedly? Yup, we’re at the first love song.
So the first time I heard Mountain Duet, I thought it was cute, in a socially awkward way. Now that I’ve heard the whole musical, I always think, “you have a wife, Anatoly.” Not that I would ever encourage anyone to stay in a relationship that’s not working, but abandoning your spouse without warning isn’t cool either--unless it’s an abusive relationship, then just get out as quickly and safely as you can, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Anatoly.
Florence worrying that Anatoly thinks she’s trying to seduce him is the sort of thing women do get accused of, Anatoly wondering if Florence is a spy seems a natural outgrowth of his association with Molokov and his concerns about being used, and, of course, a moonlight meeting on a mountain is atmospheric romance gold. Naturally, this is when Freddy shows up to be offended by Florence looking elsewhere for emotional fulfillment, which brings up the tired love triangle trope. Though it’s not much of a love triangle, since Freddy isn’t much of a romantic partner.
The games resume the next day and Freddy, for all his arrogance and posturing, loses. This is a pretty serious blow to his ego, and he decides to go full on misogynistic dudebro on Florence, blaming her for his loss and accusing her of being a “mere woman” there to exploit “the one who support them.” Florence, however, is (finally) done taking Freddy’s abuse and quits on the spot. (Florence Quits)
Then we have Pity the Child #1,or, as I like to call it, the male entitlement song (Black actually attaches this song to the end of Florence Quits). I wish I could say that this song gives me new sympathy for Freddy, but it doesn’t. Coming right off the heels of of his final gaslighting abuse of Florence, his appeal for sympathy seems like more of the same. Starting with his declaration that he isn't vindictive (I actually laughed out loud there) and ending with an appeal for compassion. Freddy simply cannot recognize that people react to him based on his own behavior. It is, start to finish, a poor attempt to garner sympathy that falls flat. Which may have been the point.
In the meantime, Anatoly has decided that he's tired of being a propaganda piece for Russia and will defect to England. Embassy Lament is a comedy piece that pokes fun at thoughtless xenophobia, but it’s not a message that’s reinforced anywhere else, so it may have missed it’s mark. In White, this is also where we find out Anatoly has a wife and two children, who he is abandoning to an environment that he has now escaped. And he's supposed to be the hero?
(Technically, Heaven Help My Heart comes next, but I’ve said everything I want up at the top and the plot flows directly to Anatoly and the Press)
So Anatoly gets his first press conference, and this is where we meet Walter de Coursey--a producer for Global Television, also an operative for the CIA. In Black, he’s a non-entity and his function (to motivate Freddy into manipulating Florence) is filled by Molokov. In White he’s still not much of a character, but he has enough speaking lines that you can figure out what’s going on. He shows up for one line to laugh at Anatoly and let him struggle with questions about why he’s defecting and why he’s leaving his wife (yeah, Anatoly, why are you leaving your wife?)
Anatoly responds with Anthem, a touching song about how his love for his land transcends nationalism, and that he doesn’t leave anything behind, but holds it all within the borders of his heart. In isolation, it’s a lovely song. It would be more lovely if Anatoly hadn’t just abandoned his wife and children in Russia. Seriously, Florence, I know Freddy was bad, but this guy? Being single is totally a valid option.
And that’s where we end Act One.
Next Up: Chess (Act 2) or What Happened to Florence in the Second Half?
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