The actor Nicholas Christopher—brawny, bald, with a perpetually cocked eyebrow that brings to thoughts Yul Brynner—strode by means of the aisles of Tashkent Grocery store in Brighton Seashore one afternoon. He surveyed the Russian delicacies: beef tongue, Olivier salad, “herring beneath fur” (shavings of beets and egg). “It appears like a time capsule of Previous Russia,” he mentioned. “The grannies strolling round—you’d higher get out of their method, in any other case they may simply knock you over.”
Christopher has been making pilgrimages to Brighton Seashore since this summer time, after he was forged in a Broadway revival of the musical “Chess.” The present, by Tim Rice and ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, flopped on Broadway in 1988, when its Chilly Struggle setting was up to date, but it surely retained a cult following. Christopher performs Anatoly Sergievsky, a Soviet chess champion who faces off towards an American (Aaron Tveit), with a girl caught between them (Lea Michele). Christopher’s character has shades of the grand masters Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov. The issue: Christopher knew little about chess, or about being Russian.
To be taught the sport, he practiced on the Chess.com app and watched YouTube tutorials. “When you learn the way the items transfer, it’s nearly memorizing positions,” he mentioned, strolling towards the seashore. “You arrange a place. The opposite particular person is establishing one thing else. Then you definitely adapt. Arrange and adapt, arrange and adapt. It’s very very like performing.” On the boardwalk, he sat at a concrete chess desk. Whereas getting ready for the present, he would go there to play for analysis and “lose miserably towards strangers,” he recalled. He put out the chess items, which regarded not in contrast to the forged of a Broadway musical: a refrain line of pawns, the leads (king, queen), and the supporting gamers (rooks, knights). His favourite piece is the black king, which he would fiddle with in rehearsal as a nervous behavior. “Now that’s embedded within the present. Anatoly carries a black king with him,” he mentioned.
Christopher was born in Bermuda, the place his father is a reggae musician and the city crier of Hamilton, the capital metropolis. “It’s a British colony, so he reads royal proclamations,” Christopher mentioned. “Three-cornered hat and all the pieces.” Christopher’s love of theatre started when he noticed his father carry out in Christmas pantomimes. When he was seven, his mom, a Massachusetts native, took him and his siblings to Boston for higher instructional alternatives, leaving his father again on the island to pursue his booming town-crying profession. Christopher went to a performing-arts highschool and enrolled at Juilliard, however he dropped out to tour with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “Within the Heights.” He went on to play George Washington and Aaron Burr in “Hamilton” on Broadway, and he caught the attention of Michael Mayer, the director of “Chess,” whereas taking part in Signor Pirelli in “Sweeney Todd”—an Irish con man posing as an Italian barber. “I assume Michael thought, Oh, possibly he might take a swing at a Russian dialect.”
To apply being Russian, Christopher was helped by two pals, who joined him at Brighton Seashore: half brothers named Roman and Pasha Gambourg. Roman, a lawyer and someday theatre producer, was born in Leningrad; Pasha, a screenwriter, was born within the U.S. That they had Christopher over for household dinners. “Ate Mama’s meals and drank Papa’s vodka!” Pasha mentioned. Christopher met each their fathers. Roman’s had stayed in Russia and Pasha’s had left—every was resonant for Anatoly, who in “Chess” is torn over whether or not to defect. “His character actually opened up, between these two males who made completely different selections,” Roman mentioned.
They sat at Tatiana, a restaurant on the boardwalk, and ordered a Russian feast: caviar, lamb, the herring beneath fur. “Russians are sometimes very mysterious individuals,” Christopher mentioned. “You by no means actually know what they’re pondering, after which abruptly you’re a number of vodkas in, they usually let you know their life story.”
“I’m able to take issues to the earlier degree. In time, I feel we may very well be acquaintances—possibly even strangers!”
Cartoon by Eric Clausen
The night time earlier than, Pasha had been on a chess-playing date. “I threw a pair video games,” he mentioned. “I’m a gentleman.”
Christopher: “That’s the Russian manipulation!”
“You need to know when to push, when to tug,” Pasha replied. “That’s ingrained in us.”
A waiter named Denys got here by. He had been a chess champion in Ukraine however emigrated after Russia invaded. “In United States, generally I’m taking part in within the match, possibly two occasions in a month,” he mentioned. “I wish to be the grasp. However now it’s only a pastime. I really feel so good when taking part in the chess. I am going to match, I’m enjoyable.” Professional tip: he all the time takes the rubbish out earlier than a contest. “I must throw out this unhealthy vitality, you already know?”
“I really like that,” Christopher mentioned. Vodka was poured, and the actor joined the Gambourg brothers in a toast that they had taught him: “Kto yesli ne ya? Kto yesli ne mi?” Who if not me? Who if not us? ♦
