mspt@goldfishpublishers.com
Reviewed 1/10/04
Andersson, Ulvaeus, and Rice’s problematic Chess, like Yakov Smirnov and Glasnost, is a victim of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rice’s idea about a highly charged chess championship between brilliant high-strung American Freddie and brooding Russian Anatoly became first a concept album in 1984, then a West End Production in 1986. Both were highly successful (the West End version ran for three years), and not very complimentary to either the US or the USSR. By the time the show arrived on Broadway in 1988, the cold war was thawing and the highly politicized plot was replaced by a thinner and much less interesting romance driven plot that stripped the characters of a lot of depth. Though there have been several revisions mounted by the authors (both in English and in Swedish), many considered to be superior to the Broadway script, the only script available for contract by American theatre companies is the one that was least successful. It is this inferior product with which directors Gerry and Laurie Cullity and Desert Stages Theatre is saddled. Still, many of the songs that people love about this show are featured, including “One Night in Bangkok” and “I Know Him So Well.” Also, the production features two of the highlights of their recent runaway hit Cabaret, talented triple threat Jessica Godber as love interest Florence and angelic-voiced Jonathan Bowersock as Anatoly. Ordinarily, those could overcome the plodding plot, but the Cullity’s weak direction and repetitious choreography sinks this evening into a disappointment.
The Cullitys use the theatre in the round stage
well, as this is their bread and butter, but little work seems to have been
taken on establishing what little
character the script affords. Godber is little more than a posturing will-o-the-wisp,
narrow-eyed cynic to start, wide-eyed smitten as the show progresses. Bowersock’s
Anatoly is a one-note affair, posing rumination rather than feeling. Pity the
actor who chews the scenery: Jeff Davey’s over-the-top Freddie is even
bigger than necessary as he seems to mistake Chess for Pagliacci. Davey is
also the victim of a difficult singing role as Freddie proves to be just out
of his higher range. While Terry Hamilton and Garrett
Van Rooy are perfectly
modulated as KGB-second Molokov and CIA-mole Walter, Gregg Temple is simply
awful as the Arbiter, mumbling, stumbling, and forgetting the lines to his
lone solo song. Sue Sisley, who did good work in Cabaret as Frau Schultz, proves
limited when she is allowed to try and convince the audience that the exact
same characterization can carry over to Anatoly’s oppressed wife, Svetlana.
The ensemble is enthusiastic and strong of voice, though none of them tries
to be anything more than a chorus member, even when highlighted in small roles.
The Cullitys, with the help of Lynn Hanson and Myles Vann, seem fixated on all of the dancers and actors holding their arms in front of them in a Yentl pose for what seems every choreographed scene and song, while the clever use of a trio of backup singers highlighted in Florence’s cliché-ridden “Nobody’s Side” becomes an overused image before the end of the evening. Gerry Cullity and Amy Steging, lacking space for a real set, depend instead on two large video displays that are extremely distracting, running through dialogue and songs and stealing focus. A lot of the show works if you close your eyes and listen only to the singing, which is mostly excellent (save for mumbling hesitancy in songs like “Quartet” and “Arbiter’s Song” and the relentless charge of the necessarily canned music that caused many slips), but is that necessarily a workable fix?
Sometimes a huge hit can be a curse for a smaller company, setting expectation ridiculously high. However, this production, with its good singing and enthusiasm, balanced with its many various problems is a more realistic expectation level for Desert Stages.
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