"The actor Nicholas Christopher-brawny, bald, with a perpetually cocked eyebrow that brings to mind Yul Brynner-strode through the aisles of Tashkent Supermarket in Brighton Beach one afternoon. He surveyed the Russian delicacies: beef tongue, Olivier salad, "herring under fur" (shavings of beets and egg). "It feels like a time capsule of Old Russia," he said. "The grannies walking around-you'd better get out of their way, otherwise they will just knock you over.""
"The show, by Tim Rice and ABBA's Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, flopped on Broadway in 1988, when its Cold War setting was contemporary, but it retained a cult following. Christopher plays Anatoly Sergievsky, a Soviet chess champion who faces off against an American (Aaron Tveit), with a woman caught between them (Lea Michele). Christopher's character has shades of the grand masters Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov."
"To learn the game, he practiced on the Chess.com app and watched YouTube tutorials. "Once you learn how the pieces move, it's just about memorizing positions," he said, walking toward the beach. "You set up a position. The other person is setting up something else. Then you adapt. Set up and adapt, set up and adapt. It's very much like acting.""
Nicholas Christopher explored Brighton Beach's Tashkent Supermarket, noting Russian delicacies and describing the place as a time capsule of Old Russia with assertive elderly shoppers. He was cast as Anatoly Sergievsky in a Broadway revival of the musical Chess and initially knew little about chess or Russian identity. He learned via the Chess.com app, YouTube tutorials, and repeated practice at a concrete boardwalk chess table, often losing to strangers. He compared chess to acting — setting up positions and adapting — and imagined the chess pieces as a theatrical cast, favoring the black king.
Read at The New Yorker
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