Is a CHESS Revival Coming to Broadway in 2025?

Could Chess finally make its move back to Broadway? In a recent interview with The Guardian, legendary lyricist Tim Rice, who has long teased a revival, revealed that the musical will arrive on Broadway in fall 2025.

When discussing the need for theatre to embrace the use of subtitles, he added: "I found that was a major problem with us years ago when we did Chess which did not do as well as it should have done although it’s coming back to Broadway, believe it or not, this autumn." An official announcement has not yet been made.

Chess originally opened on Broadway in 1988. It features music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of the pop group ABBA, lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice, and book by Rice. The story involves a politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two grandmasters, one American and the other Soviet, and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. The musical has undergone many revisions since its debut. 

A recent concert version was performed in 2023 directed by Michael Mayer and starred Darren Criss as "Freddie Trumper", Lena Hall as "Florence Vassey", Ramin Karimloo as "Anatoly Sergievsky" and Solea Pfeiffer as "Svetlana Sergievsky".