Chess the Musical..South Africa

This musical is currently running in South Africa…and you have the option to see it in either Johannesburg or Cape Town…make sure not to miss it! Click on the images for a larger view.

 Please click HERE to book your night with the Chess Musicals! in Cape Town. All images from the site too and there’s a link to the review in a PDF document. Please click HERE to book your night in Johannesburg and you can click HERE for more information too ….
On my blog HERE you can read more about Cito and there’s also a link to his MySpace site.
 

100th PRODUCTION AT PIETER TOERIEN’S MONTECASINO THEATRE!

Pieter Toerien presents
CHESS – The Musical
22 March – 25 May 2008
Now on stage: MAIN Theatre

Set during the Cold War, CHESS involves a romantic triangle between two players in a World Chess Championship, and the woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any specific individuals, the characters’ personalities are loosely based on those of Victor Korchnoi and Bobby Fischer. The show is not so much about the game of chess, but rather about how the Cold War affected the lives of those it touched.

Freddie, the American, is supported by Florence. During the course of the Championship, Florence falls in love with the Russian Anatoly, and leaves Freddie. This sets off a sequence of events that tears Anatoly from his wife Svetlana and his manager Molokov, who happens to be connected to the KGB. Who wins the World Chess Championship? Do the politics of the Cold War have the last say? CHESS is very dark, portraying a world where you can trust no one and love cannot survive.

From the Alpine heights of Merano, Italy to the sultry heat of Bangkok, Florence, Anatoly and Freddie find themselves swept towards the show’s climatic conclusion! Tim Rice teamed up with ABBA+s Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus in 1984 and, following the formula of JC Superstar and Evita, a concept album of CHESS was recorded. The cast for the album included Elaine Paige as Florence, Barbara Dickson as Svetlana, Tommy Korberg as Anatoly and Murray Head as Freddie. The CHESS album contained the chart-topping hits “One Night in Bangkok” (sung by Murray Head) and “I Know Him so Well” (sung by Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson).

CHESS debuted on the London stage in 1986 and played for three years with a cast led by Elaine Paige, Tommy Korberg and Murray Head, while the subsequent short-lived Broadway company featured Judy Kuhn, Philip Casnoff and the late David Carroll. The score includes such tunes as “Nobody’s Side,” “One Night in Bangkok,” “Anthem,” “I Know Him So Well,” “Pity the Child” and “You and I.”

CHESS is a ‘cult’ musical which is hugely popular with musical theatre fans and the general public alike and was voted in the All-Time Top Ten in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the United Kingdom’s “Number One Essential Musicals”.

South African Premier

Pieter Toerien’s South African Premier of CHESS will begin previews at his Montecasino Theatre on the 22nd March and run till 25 May before moving to the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town. CHESS is the 100th production on stage at Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre.
Source: HERE …

 

Cito…as Frederick…image: Montecasino

On THIS LINK you can read about Chess, the Musical in London.

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Chess the musical in London

Read on THIS LINK on my blog about the musical “Chess”…in South Africa.
Tim Rice brings back musical Chess for a Royal Albert Hall concert starring Idina Menzel

 

Tim Rice has been busy plotting all the right moves to bring his musical Chess back to London.

 The lyricist wrote Chess with Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson 25 years ago and it spawned a hit album, featuring Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson, before it began its troubled stage history.

 

 

Two of the numbers from Chess – I Know Him So Well and One Night In Bangkok – became international hits.

Now Rice is producing a concert version of Chess, to run at the Royal Albert Hall on May 12 and 13.

The director Hugh Wooldridge has persuaded American lyrical baritone Josh Groban and award-winning Broadway star Idina Menzel – she was in the original London company of Wicked and is also in the movie Enchanted – to perform as the musical’s two lovers.

The show explores a romantic triangle involving two chess champions – Russian and American – plus the American’s lover, set against a backdrop of KGB intrigue.

Tim said one of the problems with the show’s earlier productions was that it was changed too much. Now, he intends to use the original album as a template for the concert in May.

“Rather than set up a £20million production, we want to see how it holds up at the Albert Hall before we move ahead for an incredibly expensive production in a theatre,” the Oscar-winning songwriter told me.

Any such West End show would be cast traditionally, and not on a TV talent show.

“If it was cast on television it would be called I Want To Know Him So Well or One Night In Shepherds Bush,” Rice joked. “I don’t think so!”

He has just finished writing nine songs, set to music by Tchaikovsky, for an epic film called The Nutcracker: The Untold Story.

He joked: “Ideal, really – dead composers don’t answer back.”
Source…click HERE to read.
Click HERE for the London Theatre-guide.

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