Razzle Dazzle

by Michael Riedel

  II. Everyone at the table died of AIDS, said Jon Wilner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  End of the Line

  Tim Rice had been toying with the idea of a musical about a grand-master chess tournament ever since the 1972 match between Bobby Fischer, of America, and Boris Spassky, of the Soviet Union. This bout was the Cold War played out on a chessboard in Reykjavik, Iceland. Rice began following chess tournaments, and in 1981 traveled to Merano, Italy, to watch Anatoly Karpov square off against Viktor Korchnoi, who had defected to the West in 1974, leaving his wife and son behind the Iron Curtain. It was said he had a mistress in the West and that when his wife and son were finally allowed to leave the Soviet Union, Korchnoi’s lawyer greeted them with divorce papers.1

  “Korchnoi had a confused private life,” said Rice, “and I began to think there is more to this scenario than just two guys playing chess.” Rice’s life was, at the time, also “confused.” He was having an open affair with Elaine Paige, though he remained married to his wife, Jane, and spent weekends with her and their children.

  Rice wrote Chess, in part, for Paige, who would play Florence, an Englishwoman who has an affair with Anatoly, a Russian grand master and defector. Anatoly is torn between his love for Florence and his duties to his wife and family in the Soviet Union.

  “There is certainly a bit of an autobiographical thing in Chess,” Rice would tell Vanity Fair.2 “A man with two women pulling in different directions—yes, well . . .”I

  Rice asked Lloyd Webber if he’d like to write a musical about chess, but Lloyd Webber preferred pub quizzes to chess. “I couldn’t get my head ’round how to do it theatrically,” he said. “It needed some sort of structure.” Besides, he was already at the piano adapting T. S. Eliot’s poems.

  While he was working on Chess, Rice was also talking to the Nederlanders about writing a musical with Barry Manilow. One afternoon, Richard Vos, the Nederlanders’ creative director, told him that ABBA wanted to do a musical. Rice thought that was a good idea. He loved their songs—“Waterloo,” “Fernando,” “Mamma Mia.” A few months later, he traveled to Sweden to see a production of Evita. He arranged to meet Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. When he mentioned his idea for a show about chess, they jumped at it. Living next door to the Soviet Union, the Cold War was palpable. Within days, Rice and ABBA began drafting a story.

  Over the next few years, Rice traveled back and forth to Sweden, writing songs with “the ABBA boys,” as everyone called Ulvaeus and Andersson. He often brought Paige with him, and she’d perform the songs—“I Know Him So Well,” “Pity the Child,” “Heaven Help My Heart”—with singer Tommy Körberg in ABBA’s recording studio, Polar.

  “We mucked about,” Paige recalled. “Tim mucked about with the lyrics, we changed keys, swapped parts. And Benny would sit at the piano and these gorgeous melodies of operatic proportions would pour out. We’d work all day, have dinner, and drink too much vodka. It was wonderful.”

  In 1984, they recorded the concept album of Chess, with Paige, Körberg, Murray Head, and Barbara Dickson backed up by a choir of fifty and the London Symphony Orchestra. “It was the eighties,” says Paige, “everything was big and bold and brash.” The album took off, reaching the Top Ten in Britain and Europe and climbing to #47 on Billboard in the United States. “One Night in Bangkok” became a number one hit all over the world. The record company produced a live concert version of the album, and Rice, Paige, ABBA, Körberg, Murray Head, and Rice’s personal assistant, a stylish blonde named Judy Craymer, toured Europe.

  The album and the concert received terrific reviews. Rice was pleased one day to pick up Time magazine and see Bernard Jacobs, of the mighty Shubert Organization, quoted as saying Chess was “the best score I’ve heard since My Fair Lady.”

  The Shuberts wanted to produce the musical, but Rice’s loyalties lay with Richard Vos. But Jacobs had a trump card: Michael Bennett. They’d patched up their relationship (with the gentle prodding of Betty Jacobs). Bernie gave Bennett the Chess album and asked him to direct the show. First in London, then New York.

  “Bernie delivered Michael Bennett, which was portrayed to us as a coup,” said Rice. “The Shuberts had moved in.”

  “Bernie was determined that Chess would be the show that returned Michael Bennett to Broadway,” said Robert Fox, hired by Jacobs to manage the production in London. “Benny and Björn had no idea who Michael Bennett was, and Bernie was talking him up as the greatest director of all time. Michael would fly back and forth to meet with Tim and Benny and Björn and outline his vision for the show. The negotiations were endless as to who was going to do what, how much money it was going to cost, how much of the show everybody owned. Bernie was masterminding the whole thing. And he’s absolutely loving it because he’s manipulating lawyers in London and in New York and he’s trying to fuck over Tim and Benny and Björn’s lawyers, and they’re trying to fuck him over and everyone’s trying to fuck everybody—and the show isn’t even in rehearsal.”

  Eventually, they reached a deal. The show would cost two million pounds, making it the most expensive production in West End history. Rice and ABBA would own 50 percent of it, the Shuberts 25 percent and Bennett 25 percent. Chess would be the first major musical the Shuberts would produce from scratch since the days of Sigmund Romberg.

  Bennett invited Rice and ABBA to spend a weekend at his house in East Hampton, which he’d recently bought from David Geffen. They were going “to crack the story line,” said Rice. “And crack turned out to be the appropriate word.”

  Rice was ferried in style by a Shubert limousine to East Hampton. As he relaxed in the backseat, cocooned in black leather upholstery, the divider window slid down and Hank, the driver, said, “Oh, Mr. Rice—do you know where Mr. Bennett’s house is?”

  “Uh, no,” Rice said. “I’ll write the songs. You drive.”

  “Well, I’d better stop and make a call.”

  The limo glided into a rest stop along Montauk Highway where there was a pay phone. While Hank made a call, Rice hopped out of the limo to relieve himself. “I wandered over to this sign which indicated this was the first sighting of the Indians in 1643. It was very interesting stuff. When I finished, I began wandering back to the car and I saw Hank get in. I was twenty yards away and I was strolling and suddenly the car shot off. And I thought, Oh, my God. He thinks I’m in the back!”

  Rice had left his jacket and wallet in the limo. He was stranded along Montauk Highway without even a quarter for the pay phone.

  The Shubert limo rolled up to Bennett’s house on James Lane. Bennett was standing in the driveway. He opened the back door and found Rice’s jacket. “Where is he?” Bennett said. “Oh, my God,” said Hank. “I know where he is!” He jumped in the car and sped off.

  Bennett and Rice had a good, long laugh about the incident that night. It was, though, about the only laugh Rice would have that weekend. Bennett had exciting ideas for the show. The romantic triangle linking Florence to both the Russian and American chess champions would be played out along the lines of Casablanca. The production would have the elegance and pacing of a James Bond movie. Bennett envisioned a wall of video screens on which the chess match—and the media coverage of it—would be shown. Chess, he said, would not only be about the Cold War but also the media circus that descended on the two grand masters.

  “All very interesting stuff,” said Rice, “but I never had the feeling Michael really wanted to do the show. That may have been the beginning of our troubles.”

  Rice was also put off by the amount of drinking and coke sniffing Bennett was doing all weekend long. “I wasn’t a hundred percent happy,” Rice said. “I remember trying to find excuses to go into East Hampton and do a little shopping.”

  Bennett was usually high when he worked on Chess. At 890 Broadway, he, Bob Avian, and Robin Wagner would have lunch at a local Italian restaurant and down two or three martinis. Back at the office, Bennett would do lines of cocaine on his desk. Then he
’d go to work on the show.3

  Rice didn’t think the weekend with Bennett had been that productive. But the show rolled on. Robin Wagner designed a giant computerized chessboard on which the action would take place. Hydraulically operated, the board could change shape, becoming a mountain range or the interior of a hotel. The production was going to be slick and spare. “Michael had seen some footage of a Stones concert I did [in 1967],” said Wagner. “He was starting to see Chess more and more like a rock concert.”

  Meanwhile, Robert Fox and other members of the production team went to Holland to see the giant video wall Bennett wanted. It had been designed by Philips, the technology company located in Amsterdam. “The viddy wall,” as Fox called it, would cost several hundred thousand pounds—plus shipping to London.

  In the fall of 1985, Bennett moved to London to conduct auditions. Elaine Paige, Murray Head, and Tommy Körberg were signed to play the leads but the ensemble had yet to be cast. Bennett rented John Le Carré’s house along the Thames in Chelsea. He became friends with Judy Craymer, Rice’s assistant. She was having a fling with Head. They often joined Bennett for dinner at the house. “He was vibrant and energetic—and wonderfully mischievous,” she said. “And then one day he was gone and never came back.”

  • • •

  Auditions for Chess were held on the second floor of an old rehearsal studio in the West End. One day Bennett was climbing the stairs and suddenly couldn’t breathe. He struggled to the top of the stairs and collapsed. He knew something was wrong. He had noticed, before leaving for London, a purple spot on his right foot. He told friends—and himself—it was just a scab. But he’d also been losing weight. He flew back to New York and saw his doctor. The scab was Kaposi’s. Bennett had AIDS. He told his best friend, Bob Avian, first. Then he told Robin Wagner at 890 Broadway. “I have bad news,” he said. “You can’t tell anyone. I have Kaposi’s sarcoma.” Wagner knew that meant AIDS. He ran into the gym and broke down in tears.

  Bennett told Breglio over the phone late that night.

  The one person Bennett could not bring himself to tell was Bernie Jacobs. After his diagnosis, he fled, once again, to St. Barts. He called Jacobs from there and told him he was pulling out of Chess. He said he didn’t like working in London, he was unhappy with Elaine Paige, Tim Rice’s script wasn’t what he wanted—all sorts of excuses.4 Jacobs wasn’t buying it. When Bennett returned to New York, Jacobs pressured him to go back to London and the show. This time Bennett told Jacobs he had a heart condition and his doctor warned him against taking on the stress of a new musical. Jacobs still didn’t believe him. He called Breglio and demanded to know what was going on. But Breglio had given Bennett his word he wouldn’t say anything. “I told Bernie Michael wasn’t feeling well,” he said, “and Bernie went crazy.”

  Breglio told Bennett, “Michael, you can’t keep this up. This is crazy. You see this man all the time. How can you not tell him?”

  Bennett met Jacobs in his office above the Shubert Theatre. Jacobs was angry. “You can’t walk away from the show like this,” he said. “What is wrong with you?” Bennett stood up. “Come with me,” he said and led Jacobs to the men’s room. He closed the door and unbuttoned his shirt. He had Kaposi’s sarcoma scars all over his chest. Jacobs fell into his arms. They held each other and cried.

  • • •

  “Once Bernie knew, we were on a mission to save Michael,” said Breglio. “We knew it was fatal, but we just couldn’t accept it.” They contacted the National Institutes of Health and got hold of the experimental drug AZT. Bennett also had numerous blood transfusions. When he wasn’t in the hospital, he retreated to his house in East Hampton.

  The Broadway gossip mill began to churn. Why had Bennett withdrawn, so suddenly, from Chess? The New York Times, the Post’s Page Six, and Daily News gossip columnist Liz Smith were sniffing around the story. They had to be told something. Jacobs and Bennett decided on a cover story, “a fraud,” as Breglio put it. Bennett had left the show, Jacobs told the Times, because he was suffering from angina pectoris, severe chest pains that cause shortness of breath and palpitations. Jacobs said a new director for Chess would be hired but that Bennett would continue to help with the show. “At times he’s better, at times he’s worse,” Jacobs said.5

  Jacobs told Robert Fox that Bennett had AIDS, but swore him to secrecy. “On a personal level, we were incredibly upset,” said Fox. “On a professional level we were in shit. The show was nearly cast, the set was being built, we had a theater date, and we were selling tickets.” Bennett was going to invest five hundred thousand pounds in Chess. Jacobs offered Fox the chance to raise Bennett’s share.

  “Even though there was no director, I thought, We’ll get somebody and we’re selling tickets,” Fox said. “So I took it. Insane.”

  In London, the story was that Bennett left because he didn’t get along with Elaine Paige.

  “I was skiing in Courchevel, and it’s white, white, white, and I see this black gentleman walking up the mountain,” Paige said. “I looked and I thought, That’s Baz Bamigboye [gossip columnist for the Daily Mail], and he’s headed right toward me.”

  “Michael Bennett has pulled out of Chess, and I hear it’s because you and he had a row,” Bamigboye said.

  “The story was all over the English press, and it was utter nonsense,” said Paige.

  Rice was kept out of the loop as well. He was simply told Bennett was leaving the project—no explanation given.

  “And then there were these ludicrous arguments about his royalties,” Rice said. “The Shuberts seemed more concerned about getting Michael paid for his work than getting the show on. I kept saying, but this guy has just dropped us in the cart. Finally, somebody said he was ill. I thought maybe Michael was using that as an excuse because he was never keen on the project. Somebody asked if there was any proof he was ill, and Robert Fox yelled, ‘Don’t ask anymore—shut up!’ That’s when I knew there was obviously something more going on here.”

  Though Jacobs was devastated to learn of Bennett’s illness in January 1986, the Shuberts could not back out of Chess. The production was too far along to be scrapped. Over lunch at the restaurant Barbetta, Jacobs suggested to Bennett that Bob Avian take over the show. But Bennett dismissed the idea. “Bobby is a number two,” he said. “That’s what he wants to be. Leave him alone.” The talk turned to Bennett’s illness. He bent his head toward the table and parted his hair. The Kaposi’s had spread to his scalp.

  After kicking around a number of names—David Leveaux, a young director who’d come into the Shubert orbit with his acclaimed revival of Anna Christie, was on the list—the Shuberts turned to Trevor Nunn, the director of Nicholas Nickleby and Cats.

  Nunn was in New York staying at the Sherry-Netherland when he got a call early one morning. Jacobs asked if he could see Nunn right away. Nunn knew it must be serious because instead of asking him to come over to the Shubert offices, Jacobs said he and Schoenfeld would come to the Sherry-Netherland. They entered his room looking, Nunn recalled, “very somber.” They told him Bennett had AIDS. They also told him they had an enormous amount of money on the line with Chess.

  “We’re here, Trevor, to say, we need your help,” Jacobs said.

  Nunn was not going to say no to the Shuberts, but Clever Trevor had a price. A few months earlier, the Shuberts had agreed to produce a revival of Nicholas Nickleby, first on tour and then in New York. But they were having doubts about its viability. Nunn had cast the production—he’d promised jobs to a whole company of actors—when the Shuberts started to wobble. Nunn told them he’d do Chess, but only if they’d commit to his revival of Nicholas Nickleby.

  The Shuberts informed their partners on Chess—Robert Fox, Tim Rice, ABBA—about the new arrangement. To get Nunn, they’d all have to invest in Nicholas Nickleby.

  “Not only am I a producer of Chess for five hundred thousand pounds, which I have yet to raise,” recalled Fox, “but I am also now a proud owner of 25 perc
ent of the investment on Nicholas Nickleby, which I do not want. I am now drinking and taking anything I can get my hands on to stay afloat.”

  Jacobs privately told Fox, another young theater person to whom he felt paternal, not to worry. “You have to be seen to put up the money,” he said, “but I’ll underwrite you if it goes wrong.”

  He was not so paternal to Rice and ABBA. He told them they would have to become coproducers of Nicholas Nickleby if they wanted Nunn to direct Chess. They put $1 million of their own money into the revival.II

  His price met, Nunn jumped into Chess. He inherited Bennett’s production—Bennett’s concept, his cast, much of his creative team, his “viddy wall”—but Nunn had his own ideas about how to stage the show. Bennett wanted a spare set—just the moving chessboard and the viddy wall. Nunn wanted realism. He wanted scenes set in hotel rooms to look like hotel rooms. He wanted furniture, in particular chairs—forty-seven chairs, to be exact. There were now so many chairs on stage the cast began calling the show Chairs, a cheeky reference to the absurdist play by Ionesco.

  “Trevor started asking for adjustments here and adjustments there, and our budget is starting to balloon,” said Fox. “We go from two million pounds, to three million pounds, and end up at four million pounds. Trevor is running amok with the budget because he knows we have to say yes. But we are taking in money at the box office. The show is selling extremely well. At this point, it’s a megashow with a huge advance, and it’s going to open in London and then New York and then California. And every time I tell Bernie about the budget he says, ‘Fine.’ ”

  If Jacobs was agreeing to all of Nunn’s demands, it was because his mind was not on Chess. He wasn’t even in London. He was in New York, trying to save Michael Bennett.

  And then one afternoon his mind wasn’t there at all.

  “It was Rosh Hashanah, and we were having company for dinner,” said Betty Jacobs. “Bernie had a nap and when he woke up, he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t remember anything. I took him to the doctor and the doctor said he had lost his memory—completely. All I remember now is the dinner, because I wasn’t home to help the girl in the kitchen, so she put the gefilte fish in the chicken soup.”