The production was floundering when Trevor Nunn - director of Cats, co-director of Les Miserables - came to the rescue. Nunn helmed a half-done show, recreating it with elements of visual realism and cinematic flair that would always be his trademark. Chess became a sort of hybrid between two directors, and would survive that way.
This Chess spared no expense, either. The entire show was set on a massive, underlit, rotating, tilting chessboard that stretched across the stage. Upstage was a bank of 64 television screens; another 64 could come down from the flies. There were more monitors to the sides. The sets were lavish; the production called for so many chairs that this became the parody-name for the show among the cast. Indeed, some character solos were sung in chairs - "Where I Want to Be" and "Nobody's Side" come to mind. Chess cost, I believe, somewhere in the realm of $15 million, a number that it barely recouped before closing in 1989.
The show was tailored to its rather middle-aged leads. Anatoly was Tommy Korberg, quintessentially; likewise Elaine Paige was Florence and Murray Head played Freddie. The trio is considered legendary; a remarkable feat considering that Head's voice began to go by June and was out of the production in a matter of months. Nonetheless, it had enough magic to stay alive.
More than that, a lot of resources were wasted; it was not until about 50 minutes into the show, during the first chess match, that the massive array of screens would come down from the flies. They would not play a big role in the show; this represents, to me, a waste on Nunn's part. Likewise, Bennett hired a massive cast - 47 - and most of them were dancers. Yet the choreography was either improvised or most thoroughly uninspired. Aside from "The Story of Chess" and "The Golden Ballet," most of the moves were boring and had no interesting capacity in the story. The biggest offender here was probably the disco-style "The Arbiter's Song," a massive, overdone number with little rhyme or reason. Yet perhaps even worse was the minimal trotting of "Merano," not making a great parody number out of a rather clever song that was asking for it.
And there is a third problem: you will notice that there were 50 minutes of Chess before the first match. I've timed it; you can trust me. This sort of problem with far, far too much buildup would plague Chess throughout its history; while one could claim that it is not really about the game of chess, in all honesty, the plot doesn't really start moving until Freddie walks out of the first game. Before that, it's all what they call in Urinetown "Too Much Exposition." (There's really no such thing; what they mean is that the exposition is handled clumsily enough that people notice it.)
In the middle of the show, Freddie loses the chess match. He comes back in the next act as a reporter, but something just isn't right; Viigand is so much of a nonentity that he only has a single speaking line. And that is "Checkmate. Good night." The balance of the characters is suddenly way out of whack. Whether you count Florence or Anatoly as the protagonist, everybody else is essentially out of whack.
So there are those problems. Is that it? Not really. As is often the case with mostly sung musicals, there often isn't sufficient motivation for every song. That's why shows like The Phantom of the Opera and London Chess often seem to be more collections of scenes than coherent theatrical pieces. While I think that Chess pulled it off better, it's still not entirely strongly linked. There is a sense that it needed to be reworked.
To date, it hasn't really been topped.
-Wayne