Strong characters with Russian accents, a story line set in an era unfamiliar to teenagers, an elaborate set design with complicated lighting cues and music that covers the waterfront — it’s no wonder the high school drama department started work on this play last spring.
But they did and the hard work was evident at Chess the Musical, which opened last night at the high school Performing Arts Center and shows again tonight and on Sunday this weekend.
The play tells the story of a love triangle between the world’s two top chess players, an American and a Russian, and the woman who manages one but falls in love with the other. Set in the Cold War era, the Soviet master Anatoly Sergievsky (played by Gage Rancich) and American challenger Freddie Trumper (played by Taylor McNeely) duel for the title of champion in Bangkok and the attention of Florence (played by Haley Hewson).
As complicated and intricate as the game of chess, the musical has presented a number of challenges for the drama department.
“It’s fabulous for something like this because it’s such a challenge and educationally it’s so incredible, it makes people aware of the history they may have forgotten or not experienced and puts it on the stage,” director Katharine Poole Murray said outside the theatre one morning early this week. “Not a lot of people do it, they do songs from it because . . . they were popular songs but nobody knew where they came from.”
Student actors were assigned to research their characters and create a glossary of terms, including Budapest, Bangkok and Bobby Fisher, on whom Freddy Trumper’s character is partially based.
“There are methods and tactics and how this whole play is a metaphor for that and the Cold War,” said music director Janis Wightman.
“And how the two are a metaphor for each other,” Ms. Murray added.
Written and composed by Tim Rice (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar) and Bjorn Ulvaeus (formerly of ABBA), the show was a flop on Broadway and in London and has been recast since its 1988 premier, including with different endings. The high school version is a combination of the two productions, with room for interpretation, Ms. Murray said.
“It’s still a show that honestly my guess is Tim Rice and Bjorn [Ulvaeus] are still looking at this going, God we could do so much with that if we could have another workshop of it, but it didn’t do well,” Ms. Murray said. “There was a happy ending and we have the non-happy ending, which is much stronger and makes more sense.”
And then there is the music.
“Ah, the music,” Ms. Murray said.
“It goes from barbershop through stand-up traditional choral to rock to ballads to pop to Rodgers and Hammerstein to Gilbert and Sullivan and a quotation from last year’s musical [Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory],” Mrs. Wightman said.
The most well-known song in the play is One Night in Bangkok, which takes place when Freddy Trumper takes himself out for a night on the town after forfeiting the first chess match because he accuses Anatoly of cheating with yogurt.
At rehearsal on Monday night student actors came racing down the halls in metallic and sequined pants, feather boas and zoot suits. A lit bar was set up on the side of the stage as human chess pieces danced around a larger-than-life chessboard.
“The challenge to the kids vocally is huge,” Mrs. Wightman said, noting that some arrangements had to be modified to accommodate the students’ ranges. “We’re talking about adult rock and roll singers doing this [originally].”
She said in all her years of directing musicals, this is by the far most difficult. The students sing to an orchestra recording, something new for both her and the actors.
Actors also had to learn accents, and with the help of a University of Kansas international dialects Web site they studied Russian, Thai and Hungarian. Coincidentally, the university provided narration of the entire Chess script because of the difficulty and variety of languages used in the play.
“There’s so many levels — the love triangle, Freddy Trumper’s issues with his family and past, Florence’s issue with abandonment,” Mrs. Wightman said.
“We ask people to suspend your disbelief,” Ms. Murray smiled. She concluded:
“It’s one of those stories you’re going through and you learn the relationships and the history of these characters as you’re going through. This is a full night of theatre and powerful theatre, dark and powerful theatre.”
Chess the Musical shows tonight at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. at the high school Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students and seniors. There is no show on Saturday due to the Island Cup football game on Nantucket. Because it contains strong language, the show is recommended for ages nine and up.
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