RIDING high from the worldwide success of “Mamma Mia!” (last week’s North American gross: $3.5 million, thank you very much), ABBA boys Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus have turned their attention to a new project: a revival of their 1988 Broadway flop, “Chess.”
A multimillion-dollar production of the show, which they co-wrote with Tim Rice, opened two weeks ago in Stockholm to generally favorable notices and extremely strong ticket sales that should keep it on the boards there for at least a year.
Writing in Vestmanlands Lans Tidning, P.A. Lenhov (Stockholm’s Ben Brantley) concluded: “Chess som musikal har nu hittat sin ratta form.”
Aftonbladet’s Jens Peterson wrote: “Mindre schack. Mer karlet och politik. ‘Chess” pa svenska ar ett lyft for musikalen.”
A sour note was sounded, however, by Sydsvenskan’s surly Carlhakan Larsen, who sniped: “Manga dyra parlor och klingande orhangen men inget riktigt hasband.”
(For those of you whose Swedish is a little rusty, I’ll translate. The first review says: “Chess as a musical has now found its true form.”
(The second says: “Less chess. More love and politics. ‘Chess’ in Swedish is an improvement for the musical.”
(And the third says: “Many expensive pearls and ringing earrings but no real necklace” – which makes no sense, but strikes me as being not very nice).
The Shubert Organization, which produced “Chess” on Broadway, invested in the Swedish production and is said to be seriously considering bringing it to New York at some point in the next couple of years.
“We expect this production will have a life beyond Sweden,” said Shubert chairman Gerald Schoenfeld.
Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, “Chess” is a rock musical about a chess tournament between a Soviet grand master and his American challenger.
The two men are also locked in a battle for the same woman.
Critics of the Broadway production praised the score (“One Night in Bangkok, “I Know Him So Well” and “You and I” are the hit tunes), but slammed the book, by Rice and Richard Nelson, and the direction, by Trevor Nunn.
Frank Rich, then drama critic for the Times, called the show a “suite of temper tantrums, all amplified to a piercing pitch that would not be out of place in a musical about . . . stock-car racing.”
The production closed after a brief run, losing nearly $6 million.
For the Stockholm production, Anderson and director Rolf Skoglund rewrote the script, toning down the international intrigue and emphasizing the characters and their relationships.
One person who saw the show says, “It’s more about the love story than angst-ing about Mother Russia, though there is a tank on stage.”
Rice attended the premiere and says he’s very happy with Skoglund’s production.
“The standard of performance is very high, and the production is quite exciting,” he said over the phone from London.
He is awaiting an English translation of the new script – “My Swedish is not that hot” – which he says he’ll study and probably noodle around with a bit.
He thinks the show plays better now that the Cold War is over.
“It was vaguely contemporary when we first started writing it in 1980, but then we had to keep changing it because of all the things Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev got up to,” he says. “The bloody Berlin Wall came down, and that was terrible for our show.”