McAnuff's visual direction was superb; he was ingenious with creating scenes via the underlit chessboard and compact motorized sets. There was a 16-screen composite video display; while it was not the vidiwalls from London, it brought home the media aspect no less well. The sets were lush, and did not constantly upstage the actors. Even the costumes were more than adequate, putting Anatoly for the first time in what can be described as vaguely fashionable attire. The choreography was generally good, and most of the scenes were directed adequately to excellently. In all technical aspects, it was actually a wonderful show.
The result was not pretty. There are some scenes that worked well, but the characters talked too much and had a tendency to overanalyze the situation. The dialogue was full of exposition ("Nothing kills a show like too much exposition" - Urinetown), most of it bad, and many times the characters would sing songs that were contradictory or at best unrelated to the situations at hand. The score was hacked to bits; from Broadway, "Smile You've Got Your First Exclusive Story," "Argument" ("How Many Women"), "Diplomats" ("US vs. USSR"), "Merchandisers," "A Taste of Pity," "Hungarian Folk Song," "Let's Work Together," "Lullaby (Apukad eros kezen)," and "Finale: Anthem - Reprise" were missing, and the only song that made it back was "Anatoly and Molokov" from London (there were two new reprises, though). What score existed was often ruined by the context it was now presented in; Coe's book had made the emotional impetus for many of the songs blatantly wrong.
Worse, the characters were not the same - indeed, they were drastically different. Anatoly was a weird, paranoid figure with little of the charm he originally had. Florence's vibrancy and vivid sense of life were now completely washed away, and the confusion and shrewishness from the Broadway version were turned way up. She was also practically a nonentity, despite being theoretically the center of the show; through no fault of Carolee Carmello's, Florence simply wasn't. Freddie was softened, but at the expense of the John McEnroe-esque quality that made him fascinating. Walter became something of an evil cheerleader, stripped of the layer of slime that made him two-dimensional on Broadway. Molokov was presented well, but was a virtual nonentity; Svetlana was made too angry to even think of her as a rival to Florence. The Arbiter, whose role was expanded, was pointlessly ethnic and had no discernable motivation in the show.
In short, the seven characters on that stage had no relationship whatsoever with their London or Sydney counterparts except for names, some songs, and the very basic outlines of action. Broadway's betrayal of the figures Tim Rice crafted was now complete. (Simultaneously, David H. Bell would be doing massive, successful restorative work on the Broadway characters in Chicago.)
The show plodded through Act 1 decently despite some pretty awful rewrites of Richard Nelson's better scenes, but it was stripped of all the fun numbers and Rice's particular sense of dry wit (see "US vs. USSR," "Merchandisers"). It followed more or less the same story as it had in every version. Act 2 was problematic - as is always the case. But here it was more acute. Without Florence's father as the primary motivator, the second act seems to meander aimlessly, focusing on an Anatoly who just doesn't make sense or have a significant motivation. Does he choose chess in the end? It's kind of implied, but then why does he lose? What is anyone in this play getting at? Aside from Walter, nobody even has a coherent reason to do what they do.
The American Tour, quite simply, wasn't Chess. It was someone else's story - a show with its name, which looked a lot like Chess. Despite its supporters, this version is simply a tragic misfire. -Wayne