Michael Mayer knows star power when he sees it. He's worked with some of the most talented performers in contemporary theater, including Sutton Foster in Thoroughly Modern Millie, Kristin Chenoweth in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Jonathan Groff and Liam Gallagher Jr. in Spring Awakening. He's done everything from classics like Uncle Vanya, to brand-new musicals like American Idiot, to revivals such as Funny Girl, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and most recently, Chess.
Chess first made its mark on Broadway back in 1988 and held fewer than 100 shows before closing that same year. But now, the show (with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA) is finding a new life on Broadway thanks to Mayer and the production team that believed in its power. But the biggest challenge, he says, was figuring out a way to make the show work, because it never quite did. The best way to stage it for an audience in 2025, the Tony-winning director tells Out, is to "celebrate the elements of the piece that stood the test of time and not get in their way, while still trying to figure out how to tell a new story," sharing that 50 percent of it is brand new and 50 percent of it is preserved from the original work.
The production arrives at a particularly tense moment in American life, given today's current political climate, and that is mirrored for the audience in the show's premise. And Mayer knew he needed an all-star cast for this updated version of Chess, which follows a love triangle among three world-class chess players. Freddie Trumper is played by one of Broadway's most in-demand male performers, Aaron Tveit. Trumper's second (or chess coach/assistant), Florence Vassy, is portrayed by the vocal powerhouse Lea Michele, and rounding out the indomitable trio is the supremely talented Nicholas Christopher as Anatoly Sergievsky. The two men are playing the match of their lives, unknowingly used as pawns by their respective governments, while fighting over the same woman, and the entire production becomes one big game of chess.
Aaron Tveit in "Chess" on BroadwayMatthew Murphy
Mayer and the new book writer, Danny Strong, have been working on this project for close to a decade. They started having conversations about the show 10 years ago, but the ball really started moving eight years ago. Over the years, they've done workshops, readings, and concert performances before finally securing a spot on Broadway. It finally came time to get a cast together, and Mayer got to work. He's known Michele since she was 14, after the two did Spring Awakening back in the early 2000s, so they've kept in touch over the years. When he revived Funny Girl on Broadway, he cast Michele in the part, and during this time, he broached the subject of Chess with her. Michele loved the idea but wanted to have a baby first, and when her son was a year old, they started rehearsals for the show.
Christopher has been on Mayer's radar for a few years now, and he cast the actor in his off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors after seeing him in the most recent revival of Sweeney Todd. "Last summer, I had Nick read for Anatoly, and he was so beautiful that I knew I wanted him to do it if and when we got the chance to do [Chess] on Broadway."
Lea Michelle and Nicholas Christopher in "Chess" in BroadwayMatthew Murphy
It was actually Michele who suggested Mayer cast Tveit in the role of Trumper. "I knew he could sing the shit out of the songs," Mayer says. "But interestingly, I'd never seen him do a character like this. We had a really terrific lunch where, after he read the script, we'd discussed the show and I talked about how I really was interested in pushing him outside his own comfort zone."
Earlier this year, the New York Times wrote a story about how the Broadway musical was "in trouble," reporting that none of the 18 musicals that opened the season prior made a profit, pointing to shows like Boop, Smash, and Tammy Faye, which each came with a price tag of over $20 million, and none of them lasted more than four months. There are several factors contributing to the struggling business, but one is that attendance is still a bit lower than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. In today's market, it feels like Broadway productions are swimming upstream.
Given that Mayer has done close to two dozen shows on Broadway (with a few revivals under his belt), he was asked to share his wisdom on what constitutes a successful revival: recouping investments, satisfying fans, or critical acclaim? "I have not read a single review of anything that I've done since 1995. I won't do it. I don't like to see it. I don't want to hear the words," he responds. "It's profoundly uninteresting to me, what the what critics have to say, unless it's going to be helpful to sell tickets, because we are in a commercial world." Mayer continues, "Broadway is ultimately about butts and seats. There's nothing I can do about that. That's just the world I ended up in."
Aaron Tveit and Lea Michele in "Chess" on BroadwayMatthew Murphy
He maintains that, to him, the true measure of success is whether the show works for the audience, whether they respond well to the production put in front of them. "I care about the audience and what their experience is," the director says. "When you're directing, you're not just telling the actors, the designers, and the musicians what you want, what you're really doing is directing the audience... My primary job is to show the audience where to look, what to listen to, and how to receive something. And I need the audience to do that."
Chess is now playing at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. Learn more at chessbroadway.com.
