Another Guilty Pleasure of mine - musicals (yes, I like musicals and bubblegum pop - I swear I'm straight)! I've liked almost every musical I've ever seen, and I've seen a fair few, including everything that Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber have been involved in - with the possible exception of Phantom, which I've never been that fond of, but I digress.
So, take one half of the most successful partnership in modern musicals and add the two guys from ABBA and you've hit musical paydirt, correct? Well, not quite. While quite popular in the UK and Europe, Chess bombed on Broadway. In retrospect, a convoluted plot involving Soviet-US politics set against the exciting(!) world of chess was probably not a crowd-pleaser. I saw it in the West End with the original cast. It was a very 80s staging with banks of video screens and a giant tilting and rotating chess-board floor but l thought it was great and would regularly play the Original Cast Recording.
Truth be told, this is not one of the best songs from Chess. In fact, listening to the original concept album the other day, a lot of it does seems horribly dated. However, I did know all the words and did a passable impression of Murray Head back in the day (BTW, Murray is the brother of Anthony Head of Buffy/Gold Blend/Free Agents fame). I caught the end of the PBS: Great Performances concert film of Chess last night starring Josh Groban and Idina Menzel - try and catch a repeat of it this week (it's on in the Tri-State area at 1am on Friday morning).
Shameful fact: my schoolfriend Mark (sorry, Mark) and I used to perform a duet of 'I Know Him So Well' - I believe I did the Barbara Dickson part. Oh, the flashbacks - I'm off to have a scalding shower...
Bonus Clip: here's Raúl Esparza performing at the Kennedy Center in DC in 2018.
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