Subsequently, American producer Richard Vos suggested to Rice to work with Andersson and Ulvaeus instead, knowing that they were looking to develop and produce projects outside of ABBA. However, by the time Rice wanted to begin work on the musical in early 1979, Lloyd Webber was unavailable, as he was already at work on his next musical, Cats. During the mid-1970s, he had discussed the idea of a musical about the Cuban Missile Crisis with his usual collaborator, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, but the idea never came to fruition.īy the late 1970s, Rice had become inspired to tell his Cold War story through the prism of the long-standing United States-Soviet Union chess rivalry he had earlier been fascinated by the political machinations of the 1972 ' Match of the Century' between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Tim Rice, a lyricist and librettist best known for musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, had long wanted to write a musical about the Cold War. ( November 2015) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification. Chess is frequently revised for new productions, many of which try to merge elements from both the British and American versions, but was not revived in the West End until 2018.Ĭhess placed seventh in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the UK's 'Number One Essential Musicals'. A much-altered US version premiered on Broadway in 1988 with a book by Richard Nelson, but survived only for two months. In the case of Chess, the concept album was released in the autumn of 1984 while the show opened in London's West End in 1986 where it played for three years.

Released and staged at the height of the strong anti-communist agenda that came to be known as the ' Reagan Doctrine', Chess addressed and satirized the hostility of the international political atmosphere of the 1980s.Īs with other productions such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, a highly successful concept album was released prior to the first theatrical production in order to raise money. The musical has been referred to as a metaphor for the whole Cold War, with the insinuation being made that the Cold War is itself a manipulative game. Ĭhess allegorically reflected the Cold War tensions present in the 1980s.

Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any real individuals, the character of the American grandmaster (named Freddie Trumper in the stage version) was loosely based on Bobby Fischer, while elements of the story may have been inspired by the chess careers of Russian grandmasters Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov.

The story involves a politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two grandmasters, one American and the other Soviet, and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of the pop group ABBA, lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice, and book by Rice.

Dinosaur chess game