Lea Michele will end her run in Broadway’s “Chess” this summer.
The “Glee” star will leave the production on June 21, 2026. Michele’s return to the stage has made “Chess” one of the season’s hottest tickets. She recently starred in the 2022 revival of “Funny Girl,” turbocharging ticket sales when she took over the lead role of Fanny Bride from Beanie Feldstein. Michele is a Broadway veteran having previously starred in “Spring Awakening,” as well as productions of “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Ragtime” and “Les Misérables.”
In “Chess,” Michele played Florence Vassy, a second who gets caught up in a love triangle with two chess masters (Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher) during the height of the Cold War. A replacement for Michele will be announced at a later date, the producers said. Though many of the show’s songs, such as “One Night in Bangkok” and “Nobody’s Side” are beloved by musical theater fans, “Chess” has had a troubled history. Its original Broadway run was a financial disaster and the book has been hard to crack. This revival still features music by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice of “Evita” fame, but it boasts a new book by Emmy Award winner Danny Strong (“Dopesick”). Michael Mayer, who worked with Michele on “Spring Awakening” and “Funny Girl,” directed the show.
In an interview with Variety before “Chess” premiered, Michele argued that the initial Broadway version of “Chess” had the misfortune of debuting right before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union was starting to collapse. Audiences, she said, weren’t interested in stories of division and geopolitical tension at that time.
“So much was changing politically, and [there was hope] the world was coming to a place of peace,” Michele said.
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