Word: nunn
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...Broadway version of Chess is daringly different from London's gaudy expressionistic phantasm. That show's chess matches are displayed on 128 video screens and refereed by a surreal punk; the production hopscotches from a Tyrolean resort to British boardrooms to Bangkok's red-light district, each cartoonishly evoked. Nunn took over in London, two weeks before rehearsals started, when the late Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls) was stricken with AIDS. Says Nunn: "By the time I came into the project, it was designed and cast, and the basic narrative decisions had been taken...
...Broadway, Nunn insisted on a completely new book and an equally new look. Central to his vision is a set made of towers painted to look like concrete and placed on turntables so they swivel to become a hotel lobby, an airport, a convention hall, a bedroom. To some extent these spaces resemble one another, but that is Nunn's point. Where the London Chess suggests the survival of kitschily various cultures, the Broadway version implies the triumph of a soulless international pragmatism that finds its perfect expression in interchangeable, neobrutalist architecture...
...Nunn has wisely downplayed the London theme that the U.S. and the Soviet Union are morally -- or amorally -- equivalent. He focuses instead on three people who have paid a huge emotional price for success, only to realize that glory does not bring contentment: an American (Philip Casnoff) who has reached ! the world chess finals; his Soviet counterpart (David Carroll); and the American's adviser and erstwhile bedmate (Judy Kuhn), who falls in love with the Soviet. Theirs is not a charming Ninotchka-style romance: the CIA and the KGB hover on the periphery, exploiting the players and the game. Offsetting...
...many Democratic Party leaders, Michael Dukakis and Sam Nunn would make such a perfect pair in the fall election that the big question has become not whether Dukakis will offer the taciturn Georgia Senator the second spot on the ticket but whether Nunn will accept it. Some have even suggested a two-for- Nunn scheme: If being a heartbeat from the presidency and riding Air Force Two are not enough, how about throwing in the Defense Department or the National Security Adviser's job? Now there are signs that Nunn might be more interested than his poker face would suggest...
...even if Nunn is willing, the less explored question remains: Is he the best choice? Geographically, the answer is yes. Intellectually too, Nunn fills gaping holes for the Massachusetts Governor, who seems to think a Midgetman is someone shorter than he. An acknowledged arms-control wizard, Nunn can move the pieces of the Pentagon around in his head as if it were a giant G.I. Joe set. He practically reorganized the place in 1986 as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee...