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Pride Month

 One error of the current revival of "Chess" is a wish to make the characters likeable. Trumper's bad behavior is "explained" through a new subplot about mental illness. There are machinations around Florence--but these machinations do *not* include lies about her dead father. Her father is, in fact, alive; he pops up at the end. (Heaven forbid we leave the theater with a feeling of sadness!)


I do not like or understand "Chess"--and I think it should be retired. But--watching clips of Judy Kuhn--I can get a sense of a slightly weightier "Chess," a better "Chess" than the one we have to swallow in 2026. Kuhn is capable of acting--she seems brittle and conflicted. This is more than Lea Michele can offer--with Michele, we get an unconvincing pantomime of distress. We also get some loud "Mariah"-inflected pop numbers.

As others have observed, the current "Chess" is half-redeemed by its Anatoly. Nicholas Christopher does actually build a character. That said, my heart belongs to David Carroll, Broadway's first Anatoly. He died of AIDS when he was forty-one--two years younger than I am now. Like Nicholas Christopher, Carroll puttered around a bit before scoring his first Tony nomination. Like Nicholas Christopher, Carroll first became a source of "Tony" buzz with the character of Anatoly.

Carroll's long-time partner, Robert Homma, lived another decade after Carroll--and died in 2006.


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