It’s the day after “Chess” opened on Broadway, and Nicholas Christopher is feeling it.
“I’m a little crunchy after last night, but my heart is full,” says the performer, who was out until 5 a.m. with his family and friends.
Christopher, who has appeared on Broadway in “Hamilton,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Miss Saigon” and “Motown: The Musical,” stars as Anatoly Sergievsky in the revival of the Cold War musical alongside Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit. For the show’s opening night, he worked with stylist Shiona Turini on a Dolce & Gabbana look complete with a Jacob & Co watch and Mateo jewelry.
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“This is all new for me, this whole fashion thing, because I’m a T-shirt and jeans, just grab something and put it on [guy],” he says. “So learning about fashion is really new to me, and it’s extremely fascinating and a whole other world that I’m just being opened up to through my Shiona.”
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“I was cool because it looked great, but I think the way it made me feel was so surprising to me. I felt I was just floating while I was wearing this,” he says. “It felt regal. I felt so cool.”
The night began around 2 p.m., when Christopher arrived to the theater “to make sure my pants fit” after they’d been tailored. He then finished writing opening night cards before partaking in the tradition of the “legacy robe.”
“The ensemble member who has done the most Broadway shows puts on this robe that has different panels from other shows, and this robe gets passed around to each show for their opening night, and it’s been going on for years and years and years. So it’s really cool and it’s a fun tradition to have, and people make speeches,” he says. “We gather together the producers, crew members, the cast, the band and wardrobe people, and we all just get together and share this moment before we open the show.”
After that was the performance, which featured “one of the most magical audiences you could ever have,” and then it was time for the red carpet and subsequent party.
Christopher initially was drawn to the production by the chance to work again with director Michael Mayer. That, and the challenge of Anatoly.
“The idea of how the heck am I, with my background, going to be a convincing Russian chess master?” he says.
He and costars Michele and Tveit bonded easily during rehearsals.
“We’re all similar places in our private lives. We all have children under five. We’re all married and we have this passion for this particular musical. And so we’re able to all look at each other in our tired faces after chasing kids around and then come to the theater and really give it our all for those three hours,” he says.
Now that opening night is behind them, Christopher is looking forward to settling into the show each and every night.
“We’ve been working on this show since the beginning of the summer. We were getting in the studio, working on the script, getting to know each other, working on the music, and then we got into rehearsals in September and we were rehearsing every day. And then we got into tech rehearsals where we were there for 12 hours out of the day. And then we go into previews where we’re rehearsing during the day and doing the show at night. And then you build up, build up, build up, build, build up,” he says. “And then finally just the release of last night, it was like, ‘oh, we did it. We got through it.’ And now we get to really investigate and dig deeper into the show every night.”