27 August 2017

Chess (the Musical) Is a Love Story

There are so many sociological angles to the musical Chess, that it's hard to know where to start.


Murray Head (Chess - ABBA) : One Night In Bangkok (3:50) • 'Murrary Head joined by Benny, Bjorn, Frida & Karen Glenmark on TV in 1984.'

The description quotes Wikipedia,

Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a romantic triangle between two top players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other; all in the context of a Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, during which both countries wanted to win international chess tournaments for propaganda purposes. • See also Chess (musical)

On another Youtube channel, 'Sandra Shevey Interviews', in Tim Rice on Chess, chess and political pawns, the interviewer (who talks more than the interviewee) twice makes the point,

Chess was not Tim's most respected or most successful work -- [Jesus Christ] Superstar and Evita have those honors.

At the end of the interview, Tim Rice manages to say,

I'm not trying to make any major political points. It's a love story. People tend to think that if you get involved in politics -- by mistake, as many people in show business and sport do -- that because politics is something that is sophisticated and complicated, that to get involved in them you have to be sophisticated and complicated, but most people who get caught up in politics unintentionally never really know what's going on.

A recent piece of news, Tim Rice: Chess Revival on Tap for Broadway "Late Next Year" (theatermania.com; June 2017), informs,

A revival of the storied musical Chess is getting ready to make its Broadway debut, lyricist Tim Rice told TheaterMania's sister site, WhatsOnStage.

[I once used the same music in a previous post, One Night In Bangkok (February 2008), but that clip is long gone.]

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