Chess
Shows · Chess
Chess is a 1986 musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of the pop group ABBA, lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice, and book by Rice. The story involves a politically charged, Cold War-era chess tournament between two grandmasters, one American and the other Soviet, and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other.
- Opened
- 1988
- Performances
- 68
- Type
- Musical
- Era
- Megamusical
Productions3 on Broadway
| 1988 | Imperial Theatre Original. April 28, 1988 · Trevor Nunn | 68 performances |
| 2003 | New Amsterdam Theatre Revival. September 22, 2003 · Peter Flynn | 1 performances |
| 2025 | Imperial Theatre Revival. November 16, 2025 |
Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.
Recordings 27 albums held
Licensing 2 entries
| US | Concord Theatricals Concord Theatricals | available |
| US | Concord Theatricals Concord Theatricals | available |
Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.
39 passages naming Chess, found by keyword across 178 books. It's where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.
The British hit Chess opened in 1988 in a revised version, but the Tim Rice musical did not repeat its London success in New York. book:at-this-theatre-100-years-of-broadway-shows-stories-and-botto-louis-viagas-rober#p184
The last popular song to come from a Broadway show just might be “One Night in Bangkok” from Chess, which opened in 1988. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p203
She Loves Me (1993 revival). Kuhn also played Florence in Chess (1988) book:historical-dictionary-of-the-broadway-musical-volume-22-william-a-everett-paul-r#p219
Bennett also withdrew from the 1986 London rock musical Chess just prior to rehearsals. book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-a-critical-quotebook-of-compiled-by-steven-suski#p278
Subsequent musicals include La Cage aux Folles (1983), Merlin (1983), Teddy and Alice (1987), Chess (1988), the 1989 revival of Gypsy, the 1990 revival of Of, Kay!, Annie 2 (1990), Nick and Nora (1991), The Secret Garden (1991), and Annie Warbucks (1993). book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-a-critical-quotebook-of-compiled-by-steven-suski#p1087
Mackintosh model, however, has not proved easy to follow. Others who have pursued similar approaches in musicals have generally failed to recoup the staggering costs of their Broadway investments-the case, for example, with Chess ($6 million), Carrie (1988, $8 million), and even such Lloyd \\/ebber shows as Starlight E… book:showtime-a-history-of-the-broadway-musical-theatre-larry-stempel#p668
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