i'm learning things i didn't want to know

I was at L's for New Year's last weekend, and in amongst everything else, she made me watch Chess.

To clarify for those of you not in this particular know: Chess is a musical in the rock-opera style with tunes by Benny and Bjorn of ABBA and lyrics by Tim Rice. It concerns the Cold War, a woman torn between two men (sort of), a man torn between two countries, and the whole business played out in a kind of on-the-nose chessboard metaphor. It dates (and is dated, oh boy) to 1984; it apparently did okay in London, but was fairly comprehensively rewritten for Broadway and bombed. (For the record, my feeling is that the London version is ... not bad, and the Broadway version is terrible, except that the new song they added for Judy Kuhn as Florence is quite good.) We (L and I and many others) did the show in college, and it was awful in a lot of ways :-/, but we do know the score, if you see what I mean.

So what she made me watch was the 2008 concert performance at the Royal Albert Hall. This is an apparently "official" (I'd have said "definitive", but my irrational issues with Tim Rice are not my focus here) version, keeping some of the new stuff from the New York edition but mainly going back to the London version, so that's good; also, it gives the aforementioned new song they added for Judy Kuhn as Florence to Svetlana, who is not at all Florence, which is sort of the whole point of her. This is an interesting choice of which I heartily approve. Anyway, this concert performance included:

• Idina Menzel as Florence - very good, but her head sure does move a lot when she sings, doesn't it?;
  
• Adam Pascal as Freddie (whom I always prefer to think of as The American) - outstanding, more sympathetic than one expects if one knows the show, and sings circles around Murray Head - except that nobody but Murray Head can really properly sing "One Night in Bangkok" (side note: this guy sang the hell out of "Pity the Child", though, I tell you what; it was as if the band played the final sting on that number and Pascal went "Yeah, Groban, I got your Anthem right here");
  
• and Josh Groban (!) as Anatoly (The Russian) - outstanding, which vocally isn't a surprise, but who knew he was any kind of actor?
  
• also some other people in the other roles.

I turned out to enjoy this thing a lot more than I'd have expected to. The show is, as I said, not very good. The music is fine for what it is, but it's not all that interesting; the lyrics are very occasionally good but usually blah or obvious or both; the whole thing is kind of a series of monologues, even when two or (verrry occasionally) more characters are together - they monologue at each other a lot. The whole thing has never really hung together, I thought, which was part of why I was so shocked when I went to see Mamma Mia!, and danced all the way home - an ABBA rock opera with a book!, omg!, I didn't know you could do that! Anyway, though, it seems that they got the Mamma Mia! people to help them pull together the Chess book, as well, or something, because now it has one, at least a semblance of one, and it's really much better than it was. ... Book-wise. (The lyrics are not much improved - there's one spot where the American used to call Florence "honey" and now calls her "partner", and that's better - but otherwise, meh.) It was a concert performance, so there wasn't a lot of set to get in the way - there was some staging, but it was more there for mood than anything else. They had a screen up above the middle of the stage where they projected scene-setting visuals, so you didn't miss the expository sets at all.

And, crucially, most of the stuff that really gets under the fingernails, they didn't take especially seriously - and that changes everything. Oh my goodness. Many, many things that fall flat when taken at face value (and god knows in college we played the whole thing straight) are sort of amusing when it's clear the performers are in on the joke.

So on balance, I wasn't sorry L made me watch it (and I've had one frakking line stuck in my head since then: "When it's East-West and the money's sky-high ..."; probably doesn't help that my street is just off East-West Highway). :-) One thing, though, just sent me into a flying rage. (Okay, two things, but one of them was Tim Rice's speech introducing everyone, and see above re: my irrational issues with Tim Rice.) The first act ends with the Russian having won the world chess championship and fallen in love with his opponent's second (who also happens to be the opponent's estranged girlfriend), and contemplating defection to the West. He sings "Anthem", a really beautiful song:

No man, no madness, though their sad powers may prevail
Can possess, conquer my country's heart; they rise to fail.
She is eternal; long before nations' lines were drawn,
When no flags flew, when no armies stood, my land was born.
And you ask me why I love her
Through wars, death, and despair?
She is the constant -
We who don't care -
And you ask me, will I leave her -
But how?
I cross over borders, but I'm still there now.

[instrumental]

How can I leave her?
Where would I start?
Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart -
My land's only borders lie around my heart.

Nice, right? It's actually a lovely enough song that it's difficult to do badly; even a mediocre singer can be quite moving, provided he has all the notes. And Josh Groban is, as you know, a fine singer - he hit it all the way out of the park by the eighth bar. But then. Then, after the instrumental, they brought the chorus in to go "ahh" behind the soloist for the end of the number. This annoyed me, but I could live with it. Stylistic differences; whatever.

What lit me all on fire was, over the last few lines of the song, what did they project onto the screen but a big Soviet flag. A SOVIET FLAG. WHAT. NO. I mean, seriously. Seriously. Did they not listen to the words? Tim Rice was in on this production and he wrote the words. WHAT?! When the man sings "I cross over borders, but I'm still there now," he's not talking about the Soviet Union! That's not where "there" is! I could just about handle the red gels on the lights over the chorus and the orchestra, but the hammer and sickle on the JumboTron are right out. "Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart," he sings. "My land's only borders lie around my heart." THIS IS NOT A SONG ABOUT RUSSIA. IT IS IN POINT OF FACT A SONG ABOUT NOT-RUSSIA. DUDES.