After ABBA fell apart, the male half of the band wrote the musical Chess together with Tim Rice. The album and the West End performances were particularly successful in England, but the musical flopped on Broadway. The story in which a woman is torn apart by love for one man but loyalty to a second man, is set against the backdrop of a chess match. Interesting detail is that one chess player is a
… Russian and the other an American. This also made the musical a symbol of the Cold War, which during its first release (in 1984) hung like a dark cloud over the world. Tim Rice announces this performance with a sense of understatement: 'Finally we got it right'. And that means an impressive performance including star cast with Josh Groban, Marti Pellow (Wet Wet Wet) and Idina Menzel. Accompanied by the London Philharmonic and elegant image projections, it soon becomes clear why the BBC listeners chose Chess as 'number one essential musical'. (PdK)more