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Chess (theatre): Difference between revisions
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{{work|wppage=Chess (musical)}}
[[File:Original_Cast_Recording_-_Chess.jpg|frame]]
{{quote|"The game is greater than its players."}}
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''We don't want the whole world saying
''"They can't even win a game!"
''[[Second Place Is for Losers|We have never reckoned on coming second;]]
''[[Second Place Is for Losers|There's no use in losing!
|''[[Yanks With Tanks|U.S.]] [[Cold War|versus]] [[Reds with Rockets|U.S.S.R.]]''}}
A [[Rock Opera]] with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of [[ABBA]] and with book and lyrics by [[Tim Rice]]. Widely considered to be the latter's [[Magnum Opus]]. It was originally produced as a successful [[Concept Album]] in 1984, then became a West End production, and eventually reached Broadway. Each version of the show has undergone changes in story and music; Rice considers the version performed in concert at Royal Albert Hall in 2008, which both restores excised early material and includes some of the later changes, to be the official one. (Fortunately, it's available on DVD/Blu-Ray, and for [[Bonus Points]] stars [[Josh Groban]] and [[Wicked (theatre)|Idina]] [[Frozen (Disney film)|Menzel]].)
The plot of each version has about this much in common: it concerns the World Chess Championships set against the backdrop of the [[Cold War]]. There's the brash American champion Freddie Trumper, the reserved Russian challenger Anatoly Sergievsky, the American's second ([[Word of God|and not at all girlfriend]]) Florence Vassey who switches her affections to the Russian, the Russian's wife Svetlana, KGB and CIA agents (Alexander/Ivan Molokov and Walter de Courcey, respectively) working behind the scenes, and an Arbiter presiding over the tournaments.
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* [[Drunken Song]]: "Der Kleine Franz".
* [[Duet Bonding]]: The entire purpose of "Mountain Duet" was to establish the relationship between Florence and Anatoly.
* [[Duet Mood Dissonance]]: "I Know Him So Well". Florence and Anatoly's wife both sing about how well they understand his needs and motivations... and may as well be describing two entirely different men.
* [[Dysfunction Junction]]: World chess championships apparently attract emotionally crippled [[Jerkass]] manchildren, women with abandonment issues, and self-absorbed adulterers. As Svetlana characterizes them: "Esoterics, paranoids, hysterics."
** This is, to a degree, [[Truth in Television]] -- the roster of chess champions is not exactly a list of the emotionally balanced. See [[Crazy People Play Chess]] above.
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[[Category:The Musical]]
[[Category:Chess (theatre)]]
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