The Chess Musical by Tim Rice and its East-West conflict metaphor - Donbyron - ABBA Music, Archival History and Record Collecting

A long game of Chess

TIM RICE has a journalist’s nose for a good story. His style is to encapsulate the complexities and subtleties of a vast theme in a short and snappy idiom, to render it instantly accessible to a mass-circulation audience.
It is, therefore, both bold and courageous to make a musical out of the celebral and sedentary game of chess and use it as a metaphor for the sinister brinkmanship that aflicts the East-West conflict.
But to the man who helped the british musical come of age with such unlikely sujects as Jesus Christ and a half-remembered Argentine folk heroine, such a robust challenge should not surprise us.
And, given the media hysteria that now turns even chess into a gladiatorial contest between the superpowers, Mr Rice’s journalese way with a lyric could not be more fitting.
Where others might struggle to show off with a dazzling rhyming scheme, he is quite prepared to make use of everyday words like “nice” and “nasty”.

Heroine
“Who needs dreams ?” sings one of his anguished contestants. “Once I had them, now they’re obsessions. Hopes became needs and lovers possessions.”
I can think of no more vivid lament for the high price of fame and go-getting.
As hardly a word is spoken rather than sung, Mr Rice is, of course fortunate to have teamed up with Messrs Andersson and Ulvaeus, late of Abba, who have supplied music that is always tuneful and has occasional moments that are incandescent in the memory.

Yet for all its virtues there is a swings and roundabouts feel to the evening and although it wins on the strength of its ambition and some fine songs, there are losers too, some of them quite needless.
     If, for example, you have as a heroine a woman whose potent personality is enough to make the American lose his game and the Russian to lose his marbles, she must be given star treatment in musical terms.
     Elaine Piage, who has a voice you can hear across London, has proved she can dominate a stage with the best of them. But she is not helped in her task here. Indeed, she might be a woman who has just parked her Tesco trolley in the wings and popped out to check the meter for all the impact her entrance makes.
     A firmer step from director Trevor Nunn might have helped else where. The show is far too lond and the quaintly Ruritanian revels which preceed the coming of the two champions belong to the era of the musical Mr Rice helped to bury.
     I could have done without the silly rock and roll romp before they settled down to the serious business of the game. Speaking of which brings me to the battery of technology assembled on the stage.

Triumph
    To point up the media hype with banks of TV screens is fine. But any actor having to perform against dozens of blown-up images runs the unenviable risk of upstaging himself.
     This happens all too often for Murray Head, the John McEnroe of chess. Tommy Korberg is luckier in having some lung-swelling solos to perform on a relatively empty stage.
     The whoops of the star studded first night audience emphasised his triumph.

Taken from the Daily Mail – May 15th 1986 (by Jack Tinker p.3)

Star quality in the old-fashioned way

THE AGE of chivalry is not dead. Middle-aged, perhaps and a trifle self-conscious, but alive and kissing hands in the old-fashioned way. Rod Stewart, for reminding us of gentle times, take a bow. Elaine Paige, for responding so graciously, may all your problems be little chess ones, such as how the Prince Edward Theatre will find seats for all your fans. The King of Rock charmed the Queen of Chess at a party to celebrate the first night of her musical which had scored a great success with the audience. Observing that her spikey-haired admirer was such a gallant fellow, Miss Paige was prompted to inquire whether he too had enjoyed the show. Alas, Stewart has to confess that he hadn’t seen it. Hastily he added: “I?ve got tickets for tomorrow.”

Taken from The Daily Mail 15th May 1986