No, I was working from memory. I believe you are correct about both issues, although I’m not 100% certain about him losing “fair and square” in the first tournament. It’s been a while since I listened to it and I haven’t seen the liner notes in a few years.
Here are the synopses of the London and Broadway productions - they are substantially different.
In the London version, The American is in Bankok as a television commentator as The Russian defends his title (won a year ago from The American) against some random Russian challenger. It’s the first tune of Act II.
On Broadway, the tune is sung midway through Act I, and The American is playing The Russian for the championship in Bankok. Among the changes they had to make were removing the line “Thank God I’m only watching the game - controlling it…” from the lyrics as it now makes no sense.
I’ve seen the variant on the Broadway version that’s commonly known as the Casa Mañana Version*. In it, the ending is changed somewhat to be less depressing. London and Broadway both have the chief protagonist (Florence Vassy) used, screwed over, and given the shaft by just about everyone. The Casa rewrite tones that down a tad.
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- Casa Mañana is the name of a theatre-in-the-round production company in Fort Worth, Texas. As it turns out, that’s also where I first saw the musical. Some months later, I saw the Casa version again in Houston…
I wonder if there were changes made in the London production even as it played, because my memory doesn’t quite fit with the description given there. In the production I saw, the Russian decides at the end to return to Russia and to his wife. In the middle of the tournament, the American went to the Russian’s hotel room and told him he had figured out how to beat the new, young Russian contender. The Russian wonders why the American would want to help him, given that the Russian had beaten him and stolen his girlfriend. The American says that he despises the robotic play of the new contender. He would rather help the Russian win than let the new contender win. The play ended with Molokov telling Florence that he will try to find out information about her father. The ending left you uncertain whether Florence will decide to go back to the American.
I also think I remember that Florence did not work for the American. She was just his girlfriend who sometimes had to cover for his tantrums. She was an ex-model who had at some point met the American and had traveled with him ever since. The play stated that she was 35 as of the events of the second act, so she would have been beyond her prime modeling years anyway.
I just found another Chess website, that seems to have lots of info on the various productions - squareone.org.
Wendell, I’m beginning to suspect that the plot synopsis for the London Concept Album is not quite the same as that used in the London stage production, and that that site I linked before (Jamie Marx’s site) got a bit sloppy and referred to them both as “London.”
According to this site, the Concept Album (released in 1984) had most of the same principal cast as the London stage production (which ran from 1986-89 according to this page on squareone.org). Scroll down that last linked page to get squareone’s “London stage synopsis” - it sounds much more like what you remember - especially if you follow their link to the lyrics of “Freddy and Anatoly”, which does not appear on the Concept Album.
Damn, this is complicated. OK, here’s what I understand so far:[ul][li]Rice came up with the idea & lyrics, and got Andersson/Ulvaeus to write the music. Presumably, they had a plot synopsis to go along with it at the time. They recorded this and released it in 1984, without actually staging it anywhere as a full-fledged musical. This '84 release is the London Concept Recording, and contains the One Night in Bankok track that became a pop hit to one extent or another. The Concept Recording is pretty easy to find nowadays. This, I think, is the synopsis for the Concept Album, even though it’s called simply the “London” synopsis there.[/li]
[li]From 1986-89, Chess ran on stage in London. No cast recording was ever made. Many of the principals from the Concept Album were involved in this, as well, but there were some changes to the synopsis - they’re linked above and seem to jibe with Wendell’s recollections.[/li]
[li]One helluva rewrite was done for the Broadway production, which was a box office flop and ran for only two months (April 28 - June 25, 1988). The plot was seriously changed, although the characters and the music remain more or less the same. An Original Broadway Cast Recording was released, but I think it’s out of print now. (I have a copy, somehow.) The cover is shown here.[/li]
[li]According to this, Tim Rice travelled to Texas in 1990 to revise the Broadway version for the Casa Mañana production, which subsequently toured the US. The link also says that, “If you didn’t see Chess in London or New York, this (or one of its hybrids) is probably what you saw,” - certainly the case for me*. It’s essentially the Broadway plot with some of the complicated political intrigue removed and a somewhat happy ending (Florence really does reunite with her father, although Anatoly still gets screwed.). So far as I’m aware, no recording of this version exists. However, the music differs only trivially from the Broadway version.[/ul]There are quite a number of other incarnations of Chess, but I lack the energy to exhaustively search the linked websites. I believe most people’s exposure to Chess is via one of those four things (Concept, London, Broadway, Casa), and I’m hoping that I’ve summarized things correctly.[/li]
Actually, there’s an open letter to Rice et al. on the squareone website decrying this bizarre production history. Of particular note here are the following excerpts:
I didn’t see the London production, but it sounds like those who did might consider themselves lucky. Wendell, I’m envious.
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- Interestingly, when I saw Chess at Casa Mañana in 1991, Florence was played by Jodi Benson, otherwise known for being the voice of The Little Mermaid. When I closed my eyes, that was unmistakably Ariel up there belting out lyrics like, “I’ve taken shit for seven years and I won’t take it any more.” Brief cognitive dissonance…
Getting back to the OP, I think some of the confusion re: “gay-bashing” and “the queens we use would not excite you” are magnified by the fact that the singer/narrator sounds (to my American ears, anyway) a bit effeminate. Don’t jump all over me for the stereotype, but c’mon–this was the same era as the Pet Shop boys…
“I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine.”
Sunshine?
There are several lines in the British version of Chess that allude to that the American chess champion (played by Murray Head) is gay:
In the song “Pity the Child” the American champion remarks that he is “probably queer” by his father.
In the song “Quartet (Argument)”, the Russian champion calls the American champion a fruit.
In the song “One Night In Bangkok”, I am certain that when he says the queens we use would not excite you, he was referring to comparing homosexual variety to the ones on the chessboard.
Throughout the concept album, it is never hinted that Florence (the principle female lead) has any romantic feelings at all for the American champion. All her romantic feelings are directed towards the Russian champion. The only relationship she has with the American champion is a professional one, representing his interests at the tournament. Therefore is Florence a fag hag? Perhaps.
When I saw it performed on stage here in the US, they underplayed any form of a homosexual stereotype. They even removed the fruit remark from the Russian champion, and changed it to nut.
Basically I think the concept was to point at the fact that we think that boys who spend too much time obsessing about chess (or model trains, or computers, or studying etc) are queer because they don’t obsess about girls. Maybe they are gay, most likely not; but they are labeled queer all the same.
BTW… My favorite song on the soundtrack is the “Arbiter Song”.
“I don’t care if you’re a champion, no one messes with me…”
If you’re in North America, you’ll see the Broadway version. That’s the only one the rights company will sell, and they’ve shut down entire performance runs when someone had attempted to add songs they liked from the London version, or change the script to the Casa Mañana version (or, make it look like the supposedly good script from Australia (where they supposedly fixed a lot of the problems)).
Hey, that’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
So “Sunshine” is what, another slang tongue in cheek name for someone who’s gay?
Quasi
Do we know which of the co-writers wrote the lyrics?
I find it surprising that the same person who wrote about the dancing queen feeling the beat on a tamborine could also write a line like “Siam’s gonna be the witness to the ultimate test of cerebral fitness”.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Abba songs, I like them in fact (especially Erasure’s covers), but some of the chess lyrics are so well, cerebral.
Tim Rice wrote all the words. The guys from Abba only wrote the music.
The American champ and Florence were clearly lovers in the London stage production. It appeared that Florence was the first woman that had ever been able to endure his tantrums long enough to work through them, so she was probably the only girlfriend he had ever had. Perhaps the implication was that he was a virgin when he met her, not because he was gay, but because he was such a loner-nerd that no one had ever been attracted to him before.
It appears then that the concept album left open the issue of whether he was gay. The London stage version implied that he wasn’t gay, but had been accused of being gay, particularly by his father when he left him and his mother. His father was the sort of jerk who thought that anyone who stayed home and studied chess (instead of going out and doing “manly” things like beating up people and giving women a hard time) was obviously a homosexual. The Broadway stage version decided to just eliminate all references to homosexuality and make it clear that the American champ and Florence were lovers.
Back in the OP, gibby701 writes:
> Keep hearing this catchy Murray Head 80’s retro song on
> the radio.
“Retro” song? Is that what they call it now if they play anything that’s not currently a hit? It makes it sound like anybody who sang a song back then that doesn’t sound quite like a hit of the year 2001 was deliberately acting old-fashioned. This is really weird to someone, like myself, who was already in his thirties when that song came out, so to me it’s one of those more-or-less recent songs (i.e., songs that came out after I graduated from college).
And there is, of course, the implication that the Arbiter is gay (or completely asexual). When describing how uncorruptable he is, he sings
Don’t try to tempt me,
you’ve no hope.
I don’t like women,
I don’t take dope.
Am I the only one who remembers an alternate version of this song with a female vocal, getting airplay about the same time as the Murray Head version?
I can’t locate this song anywhere, and nobody has mentioned the variant yet. But I swear I heard it! Same lyrics, same tune, same title. But with a woman singing.
And gods help me that I know this, but here’s another parody, based on that fact: One Night on Hellmouth
I’ve never heard of the female version (and I’d love to hear it), but the song was recorded in Hungarian, of all things. Damn good version. It’s on a CD that also includes The Arbiter and I Know Him Well, and songs from Superstar, Evita, Les Miz, Miss Saigon, and Hair. All in Hungarian.
They are working on a Swedish version that should open next year, and then hopefully they will bring it back to Broadway (though I’m not holding my breath). Chess is like Aspects of Love: It has a great score, but nobody seems to be able to stage it right.
You are completely correct, a singer by the name of Robey (Louise Robey) did a female version of “One Night in Bangkok” with more of a disco feel to it. A radio station in Chicago did a survey and found that far more listeners preferred the Murray Head version.
This same Louise Robey went on to be the female lead in the television series of “Friday the 13th”. She would help her coworkers at the antique shop find cursed items.