Act One

Act Two

Album Review

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 politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two men - an American grandmaster and a Soviet grandmaster - and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. 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.

Like several other productions, namely Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, a highly successful concept album was released prior to the first theatrical production in order to raise money. In the case of Chess, the concept album was released in the fall of 1984 while the show opened in London's West End in 1986 where it played for three years. A much-altered U.S. version premiered on Broadway in 1988, but survived only for two months. Chess is frequently revised for new productions, many of which try to merge elements from both the British and American versions, but no major revival production of the musical has yet been attempted either in the West End or on Broadway.

Chess placed seventh in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the U.K.'s ''Number One Essential Musicals'' [wikipedia.org]