Interview: Hannah Cruz Says CHESS Is 'Like We’re Creating a New Musical'

Hannah Cruz is currently starring on Broadway as 'Svetlana' in Chess. Best known for her previous performances as Inez Millholland in Suffs on Broadway (her Broadway debut), Robin Martinez in The Connector at MCC Theater, and Eliza in the first national tour of Hamilton, Cruz has returned to Broadway to star in the long-awaited revival alongside Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit, and Nicholas Christopher.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Hannah about what's new and different in this first Broadway revival of Chess, starring alongside Lea Michele, what audience members can expect to see, and more. 

I am such a Chess freak, and I have been waiting a million years for a revival, so I am very excited about this!

It’s been really cool to see all of the Chess fans come out of the woodwork, because I feel like this is a lot of people’s favorite score! The score is undeniably incredible. It’s been really cool to get people in who have been waiting to hear it done for so long.

Chess has one of the most fascinating journeys of any musical, it’s had so many different versions and rewrites over the years, but this is the first Broadway revival. What excites you most about the approach that this revival is taking to tell this story?

It’s interesting, because I haven’t done an existing piece in a long time, maybe since Hamilton, it’s been a minute. But this has been such a new musical experience in so many ways. I was talking to someone in the cast who has only really done revivals, and he was like, “We’re putting new things in every day!” And I was like, “This is what I’m used to!” New lines, new sections, and we’re approaching it with the new book that Danny’s [Strong] written, which I think has made the story very concise and clear.

We are approaching the story from a lot of the same viewpoints, just with a little bit of clarity and precision that I think it needs to live up to the incredible score that’s already been written. The score and the stakes are so high that the book has to match it, and Danny has done a really, really good job of making that concise, all while being super collaborative with everyone, and hearing it in our voices, and tinkering, and being open. It’s been very much like we’re creating a new musical, in a lot of ways.

Do any particular moments of discovery stand out to you from the process of shaping this production?

I get to observe a lot because I’m only in the second act, and so, I listen to the first act every night, and I would watch it in rehearsals all the time. And there is a certain moment in Act 1, where I didn’t expect it to get the laughs that it’s been getting. So that’s morphed the section a bit. I have never been in a process where we ran the show as much as we did before we got into the theatre. Ever. We ran it for a week and a half, if not more, every day, and that I’ve never experienced. We all got to the theatre super ready for an audience, aching for an audience. Because you don’t really know what show you have until you get people in the seats.

It is continuing to teach us so much as to what people are reacting to and not reacting to, and the way that they’re responding to each character. They love The Arbiter. And of course they do, because Bryce [Pinkham] is incredibly charming, and capable, and funny. And you get rehearsal laughs, where you tell jokes for a month and a half in a room, and they’re not going to get the same guffaws as the first or the third time. But when you get a fresh new audience on his comedy, they fall in love with him. It’s really cool to see.

Something that I find interesting especially, is the fact that this musical was written in the 80s, while the Cold War was happening, and now we have a retrospective look back at that. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

It’s very, very interesting. There is a very good documentary about this online, about the making of Chess, it’s about Benny [Anderson], and Bjorn [Ulvaeus], and Tim [Rice] getting together and writing this thing, and the process from London to Broadway. And I think writing it while being amidst it, there is foresight that you’re not going to have. You’re not going to have the privilege of hindsight. And we’re still in turbulent, and scary, and exhausting political times, but we can look at the Cold War with a lot more perspective, and knowledge, and information.

You get to see conversations between the KGB agent, Molokov, and the CIA agent, Walter, and you get to see them talking about Russian and US politics, and their movements, and how each one is reacting to the other, in ways that we couldn’t have known in the midst of it. So, it’s another great example of a revival made more prescient with hindsight.

What’s happened in our politics, and in our history, and in our world, only gives it more weight. The goings on today give it a new meaning, and a heavier feel, and it is what art is supposed to do; comment on the times that we’re in, and comment on the times that we’ve been at, and try to help us never go back there.

You mentioned how beautiful this score is, what has it been like for you getting to sing these very famous songs?

Incredible! I listened to this score growing up, One Night in Bangkok, and I Know Him So Well, and Mountain Duet- huge number of plays on my iPod back in the day. And I love ABBA. There is something about Benny and Bjorn’s music that is so singable, it’s not stressful, high, musical theater belty; to sing the Svetlana stuff to me feels very earthy, and guttural, and comes from a place of high emotion, and I always find it way easier to sing from those places.

And getting to sing it with our 18-piece orchestra is pretty fantastic and superb. And getting to sing with Lea Michele is crazy. I recently found a picture of her and I at the stage door at Spring Awakening when I was young, and she was young. It’s so wild getting to see her across from me and have her be a friend. She’s such a great person, and such a great person to work with. And getting to sing with her is kind of surreal.

What can you tell us about your character, Svetlana, in this version of the musical? How has she been updated, or expanded, and how has it been finding who she is in this version of Chess?

When I came in and auditioned, I had two of the book scenes, and I didn’t have a ton of information on how she was played before, how she was portrayed, I hadn’t read the previous libretto, and I hadn’t seen the 1980 version at Lincoln Center—all of which I did later. On the page, to me, she read as a kind of higher-class, Russian woman during the Cold War, who, when her husband defected, it greatly affected her life, and her lifestyle, and the lifestyle of her children. And so, there’s this resentment, and hatred towards this man who has ruined her life, who she’s still married to, who she’s tied to in a way she can’t untangle, and whose shadow she’s continued to live in while he’s off living his best life in London.

And so, there’s a lot of really complex emotions there you have to funnel in and portray in maybe 25 minutes of stage time. So, it’s been really fun to tinker with that. I got the blessing from Michael Mayer [director] early on that I could kind of change where in that resentment and hatred I live. So, from show to show it changes, for me, how much I really love this man. There are shows where I’d do anything to get him back, and there are shows where my hatred for him is so blinding that I can’t see anything else. And it’s really fun to get to live inside of that every night and find new things. And I’m still finding temperatures on the dial of it. I think she’s really infinitely interesting.

For audiences who might only know Chess by its albums or its history, what do you think will surprise them most about seeing this version?

What surprised me most, because I do feel like I’m an audience member for half the show, I think Lorin Latarro’s choreography—I kind of can’t believe the production numbers she’s put into this. One Night in Bangkok alone is infinitely entertaining to watch. It’s definitely something you need to watch more than once, because there are so many things to look at. Her choreo, and the dancers we have, are really exceptional I’m just in awe of them every night, and everything they’re doing with their bodies. There are also sensational singers, all the choral stuff, and ensemble stuff, the choral singing they’re doing is super gorgeous, I love listening to them. That to me, is what I think I would walk away with as an audience member, in awe of that ensemble.

Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share?  

Buy Tickets to Chess