Setting the Board: Bryce Pinkham Guides the Audience Through Chess on Broadway

Bryce Pinkham has been living with Chess for nearly a decade. “I’ve been working on it with [writer] Danny Strong and [director] Michael Mayer since the Kennedy Center,” he says. “It’s almost 10 years now. We’ve gone back and forth on it for a long time,” the actor told Broadway.com Managing Editor Beth Stevens.

Pinkham plays the Arbiter, the referee of the title game and the show’s primary guide. “I think of him as an emcee, a host,” he explains. “I’m setting the table for our superstars to eat.” Those superstars are Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele and Nicholas Christopher, whose performances anchor the show. “I set the table so they can come in and crush it.”

That hosting role extends beyond the stage action. “I’m also a proxy for the audience,” Pinkham says. “I help you understand that what you’re seeing is actually what’s happening.” When the musical leans into excess, he calls it out. “Some of what you’re going to see is ludicrous, and I tell you that right at the beginning. It takes the pressure off the audience.” His job, as he sees it, is to keep viewers oriented. “I’ll catch you up. I’ll make sure you have what you need to enjoy [ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus'] music and Tim Rice’s lyrics.”

That clarity grew out of Pinkham’s collaboration with bookwriter Strong, who approached Chess without a long personal history with the show. “In the early rehearsal period, I actually wasn’t as familiar with Chess as people might think,” Pinkham admits. “Danny and I were both playing catch-up, which gave us freedom to experiment.”

Much of the Arbiter’s voice was shaped in rehearsal. “Once I realized he was game for me to play, I started throwing in ad libs,” Pinkham says. “My instinct in rehearsal is to make people laugh.” Those moments often stuck. “Early on, I’d ad lib something, Danny would refine it, and the next day it was in the script.” That process helped the role settle comfortably on Pinkham. “A lot of the lines feel like me because they came from my voice in rehearsal,” he says. “Either I reshaped something Danny wrote or he polished something I said.”

The Arbiter has no given name in the script, though Pinkham says he has experimented. “I’m still working on a name for him,” he jokes, mentioning attempts like, “Come on, Ronald” or “Come on, Davis.” Nationality remains deliberately ambiguous. “Technically he should be neutral. Maybe British,” Pinkham says. “In practice, it’s me, so he’s basically American.”

The show also carries personal meaning for Pinkham. He is married to actress Scarlett Strallen, whose father, Sandy Strallen, appeared in the original London cast in 1986. “Scarlett remembers going to see her father in Chess when she was a kid,” Pinkham says. When the opportunity arose to join the new production, he recalls that his wife was unequivocal. “She said, ‘You have to do it.’ She was right, as usual.” The connection now spans generations. “We’re bringing our kids to see me in the show, which is a full-circle moment for our family.”

Once performances moved into the Imperial Theatre, Pinkham’s relationship with the audience came fully into focus. “The audience becomes my scene partner,” he says. “Every crowd is different, and I can respond to what’s happening in the room.” From his elevated vantage point, he watches longtime fans mouth lyrics and first-time viewers react to major reveals. “There are moments where you can see the story land in real time, and that’s why we do this.”

The performances around him continue to astonish him nightly. “The first time Aaron sang ‘Pity the Child,’ the room froze,” Pinkham recalls. Lea Michele’s voice leaves a lasting impression. “The way she uses it, it’s like listening to a sunrise,” he says. “There’s all the different colors of a sunrise in her voice. In one song, the sun can rise, blaze down and set.” Nicholas Christopher creates another kind of electricity. “You watch the realization ripple through the audience that what he’s doing is real.”

Pinkham also emphasizes the discipline behind the spectacle. “All three of them are parents, doing this night after night with very little rest,” he says. “That’s craftsmanship.”

Throughout the production, Pinkham treats the Arbiter as a constant presence in conversation with the house. As he puts it, “My relationship isn’t with the other characters. It’s with the audience.”

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