Danny Strong’s path to Broadway has been fueled by sheer fandom, obsession, and a decade-long love affair with a musical he first encountered in high school. Chess, the treasured-yet-troubled musical by Tim Rice, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, first premiered at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre in 1988. Thirty-seven years later, Strong is bringing the musical home, writing an all-new book for the revival, set to begin performances October 15.

Chess has long been the poster child for beautiful but frustratingly broken musicals, with fans and critics alike praising the score while struggling to follow its story. Strong, a two-time Emmy-winning screenwriter and devoted musical theatre nerd, was drawn to the musical a decade ago. “I was listening to my musical theatre Spotify channel, as one does, and every time Chess came on, I’d get a little dopamine kick. And then I started thinking, what’s wrong with Chess? I love Chess, everybody loves Chess, but I knew it famously didn’t work.”

Strong had never seen a full production of the musical, so he put on the filmed Chess in Concert featuring Josh Groban and Idina Menzel to set the gears turning. “As I was watching it, my brain started to shift from fan mode into writer mode,” he explains. “I just started naturally rewriting in my head, and thought, gee, maybe I should try to fix this.” Inspired, he sent an almost-joking email to director Michael Mayer, asking if he wanted to work on it together. “I woke up the next morning with an email from Michael, and he just said, ‘I’m in, and Tom Hulce is producing.’ That’s literally how quickly it all happened.”

Over the next decade, things weren't always smooth sailing. Strong's adaptation has been in a state of significant flux, with many fans assuming it would never be finished. Earlier this year, Strong faced an unusual creative crossroads. Some background: Before he became a two-time Emmy-winning writer, Strong was an actor, known for playing the fan favorite character Jonathan on the original run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but I was approached to write the Buffy revamp. They wanted me to be a part of bringing it back. And I was like, ‘hell no, I’m not touching that! Are you crazy? I’ll rewrite Chess, but I’m not gonna touch Buffy,’” he laughs. 

A sequel to the supernatural coming-of-age-drama is now in the works, with original star Sarah Michelle Geller attached. Strong chose to stick it out with Chess and has not regretted it since…for the most part. “Those writers, they have a lot to live up to. It was a very wonderful show with a very unique tone. And I really hope it goes well for everyone, that the writers and the fans and Sarah have a wonderful experience like they had with the original show ... It was clear to me that Chess was the project I could pour my heart into. That’s why I picked it, even if my bank account would have preferred I picked Buffy.” Strong laughs.

Strong’s reverence for Chess’s score is evident in how deeply he has engaged with the many variations of its text. Chess has long been the passion project of Tim Rice, who wrote the original book. Initially ideated in the late 1970s, the musical was first released as a concept album in 1984 to great acclaim, before a middling West End premiere in 1986. The musical takes place during a Cold War-era chess tournament, when two grandmasters (one from the United States, the other the Soviet Union) go head-to-head on and off the board—fighting over a woman who manages one yet loves the other.

The musical was completely reworked from the top down before coming to Broadway in 1988, where it ran less than 100 performances. Additional attempts to rework the material were carried out in 1990, 1992, 2002, 2008, 2010, and 2012. Strong's version was first implemented in 2017, in a production at the Kennedy Center. From structural tweaks to character expansion, Strong’s revisions have been guided by a desire to honor the original while making it resonate for today’s audiences.

The original production earned acclaim for its Cold War-era spectacle but left audiences frustrated by thinly drawn characters—especially its women. One of Strong's primary focuses on his revisal has been to finally address that imbalance. For Strong, the key to rewriting Chess lay in giving the show’s emotional core back to Florence Vassy, the Hungarian-born chess second who finds herself trapped between two grandmasters and two countries. “The goal has been to try to make [Florence] as rich a three-dimensional character as we could,” Strong says. “To give her her own agency, her own storyline, her own arc. She very much is a victim of the Cold War.” 

Strong’s adaptation reframes Florence as the audience’s anchor in a world dominated by ego, politics, and surveillance. Lea Michele, who stars as Florence, has played a crucial role in that evolution. Strong lights up when describing their collaboration. “Her notes are really smart and her ideas are so expansive,” he states, leaning forward. “I’ve loved it, because she’s elevated the writing.” Their conversations about character motivation and inner life have deepened not just Florence’s scenes, but the entire emotional spine of the show.

“Conceptually, it’s never changed from the original ideas,” Strong continues. “I've just been trying to make it better, richer, deeper.” Florence’s political past, hinted at in the original, is now fully woven into the plot, giving her decisions weight beyond the love triangle. She is no longer a passive observer caught between Anatoly and Freddie, but a woman whose loyalties and grief are inseparable from the ideological machinery crushing her.

Strong’s attention to Florence is part of a larger recalibration of Chess’s gender dynamics. Svetlana, Anatoly’s estranged wife, has also been expanded from a narrative obstacle into a mirror of Florence—another woman harmed by men who play games. “The whole show has been about finding the emotional truth in all of these characters,” Strong says. “What they think they want versus what they really need.”

By clarifying their motivations and complicating their choices, Strong brings Chess into the present moment. “The Cold War themes couldn’t be more relevant to today,” he explains. “The tensions, the dread of what our leaders are doing, how international events take hold of our lives: it's heightened now, just as it was then.” In his retelling, that anxiety is refracted through Florence and Svetlana, who understand that every personal decision carries a political price.

In short, the adaptation process, as Strong describes it, was a giant jigsaw puzzle. “It was very challenging. Tim and Benny and Bjorn eventually let me cut songs; I had to make room for the book. I had to find the most effective way to tell the story of these three characters. And then I also put in true-life Cold War events, so the forward motion isn’t just the love stories, but these very espionage-driven plots that really heighten the stakes.”

Strong admits that his approach is fan-driven as much as it is artistically rigorous. “There’s 9 million opinions by Chess fans,” he admits. ”All I can do is approach it from, ‘How can I try to make the show work as well as it can work and be as profound as I know it can be?’”

For Strong, bringing Chess back to Broadway is a personal victory, as well as a professional one. “When it was first announced that it was coming to Broadway, my response was as a Chess fan. I just started grinning like, ‘Oh my goodness, Chess is coming back.’ I almost forgot that I was the one bringing it back. It was literally that simple, the joy to know this music will be heard again. And it only took 10 years of torture to get it here!”

Ultimately, Strong’s revival is about love—of the music, the story, and the theatre itself. “Once again, I’m the high school theatre nerd thinking: If Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita can be done all over the world all the time, Chess should be too. And so, let’s see if we can get this show to a place where that can happen.” The board is set, the pieces in position. Let’s play.

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