Mainstage Spotlights Cold Ward Tensions

CIA agents will be singing and chess players will be dancing when Chess begins its two week run on the Loeb Mainstage tonight. This rock musical, written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of the Swedish rock group ABBA, with lyrics by Tim Rice, tells the story of American and Russian chess players competing in a world champion chess match at the height of the Cold War.

Nationalistic tensions are high when Florence Vassy, the coach of the obnoxious American competitor, Freddie Trumper, falls in love with the Russian player, Anatoly Sergievsky. The ensuing love triangle has serious consequences—including threats to national security.

“The game of chess is a metaphor for the relationships.” says co-producer Sarah E. Downer ’04. These relationships are not merely the results of entanglements of nationalist agendas, but also the everyday consequences of Cold War politics. The musical takes a darker look at the characters’ romances and the ways in which they mask their (occasionally unwanted) everyday realities.

The game of chess dominates the show’s set, whose back wall is covered with a game board-like metal grid. The set, as Downer describes it, is “removed from reality,” and underlines Florence’s realization that “what she’s doing is basically fake.” Florence leaves Freddie Trumper for his Russian counterpart, played by Benjamin D. Margo ’04-05, who is also a Crimson editor.

But her story’s ending is far from the more conventional, sacchrine love story conclusions one might expect. “I’ve been a fool to allow dreams to become great expectations,” she sings in the show’s finale,

Rebecca J. Levy ’06 plays Florence.

The theater itself is littered with chessboards and the air is filled with the warbling of actors as they work to get ready for opening.

With singers, dancers and a 15-piece live orchestra, Chess has many challenging pieces for the cast to pull together in a difficult space.

“It’s a crazy time,” says Robert A. Hodgson ’05, who plays Walter, an undercover CIA agent. “We only have two weeks in the Mainstage,” he says, which is only a short time to show off the countless hours that go into the production.

Cast and crew who were able stayed during spring break to help bring the musical to life, contributing to the countless production details necessary for mounting a show on the mainstage.

The production, like most Mainstage productions, has attracted several of the campus’s most talented veteran performers. Margo, the Russian, who is currently serving as the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s president, also graced the Mainstage last Spring in the title role of Sweeny Todd. Though currently a first-year, Levy has also accrued impressive credentials herself as a performer for the improv comedy group the Immediate Gratification Players, and in lead roles such as Gladys Green in last season’s Loeb Ex production of The Waverly Gallery.

The producers have also been hard at work to actively seek out new audiences for the performance. To help them reach the non-Harvard Cambridge community, they have negotiated deals with John Harvard’s, Café India and Nine Tastes to provide discounts for playgoers who eat there. They have also planned a charity matineé for Saturday, with the proceeds to go to the Phillips Brooks House Association.

—Chess runs until April 12 at the Loeb Mainstage.