Archive for Musicals.Net Musicals.Net |
| RainbowJude |
Broadway Revival of CHESSThe Stage reports that "Benny Andersson has revealed plans to revive his musical Chess on Broadway."I hope that it appears in a form that does the concept and the score justice. Later days David |
||||||
| Thom_Boyer |
If Andersson's the driving force behind a potential revival, chances are it will more closely resemble the Stockholm production...and I would certainly be first in line to see it. Hopefully, any potential production would learn from Chess' first venture to Broadway and hold an out-of-town tryout or two before landing. (For some reason, Rice mentioning a Broadway revival makes me roll my eyes, but Andersson makes me cautiously optimistic...) | ||||||
| Salome |
except its Rice's story andersson only wrote the music.
Personally i havent found a single version that is ideal yet. but i m hoping thjey reinstate "Lets work together" which was only used on Broadway and in Australia. |
||||||
| Colle |
I hope they give "Someone Else's Story" to Svetlana. I think it fits her character more. | ||||||
| Salome |
i like when svetlana has the song..but ONLY WITH THE NEW LYRICS. | ||||||
| Thom_Boyer |
Andersson may have only written the music, but he seems far more adept at getting the ball rolling than Tim Rice, and he's better at surrounding himself with very talented and creative people and (mostly importantly) accepting their input -- in other words, he's a better collaborator in a collaborative medium. That, and I'm more inclined to believe Andersson than Rice as far as a new professional production being mounted. Rice has mentioned Broadway revivals of Chess constantly since at least 2000, whether anything was in place or not, I can only assume as an attention-grabbing technique. | ||||||
| Cadriel |
Chess has the strongest pop/rock score ever written for the modern theatre. It has a promising story, with intriguing characters, but it's never been executed all that well from a book perspective. I wouldn't say he "only" wrote the music.
I'd be extremely skeptical of that - it's very particular to the Broadway script, and honestly I'd hope Andersson uses some modified version of the Stockholm script that didn't even include the character of Walter. Even if Tim Rice had his way and London was used, he certainly didn't include it in the recent concert version. Unless they tried to do a direct fix of Broadway I would not expect the song to be in there. (I'm also not holding out hope for "Freddie Goes Metal," and I think that's an awesome number.) |
||||||
| Jekkienumber24601 |
Someone please show me the differences in lyrics. maybe I've only really paid attention to the new lyrics cause all of them are the same on the new concert and danish. Does broadway have different lyrics? |
||||||
| Jekkienumber24601 |
Freddie goes metal is cool but it's not needed when you have just as awesome The Deal (no deal) |
||||||
| Cadriel |
The rewritten lyrics are from Sydney (and Off-Broadway). I've reproduced them below, and bolded the parts that are different from the Broadway version (also used in the Danish and London concert versions).
Now, Tim Rice has a historical habit of changing his song lyrics around without any real justification. Nobody should deny that - how many times has Freddie's last verse of "Budapest is Rising" changed? (The answer is at least four, and that's if you don't count Stockholm, or the US Tour's probably unauthorized alteration.) Yet he leaves Florence's lyrics to "Someone Else's Story" when he already did a subtle yet effective rewrite for Svetlana....oy. On the random speculation front, it was interesting to see Andersson defending the Broadway version of the show. One of the legal hurdles to a revival has always been that any North American version of the show is contractually obligated to use Richard Nelson's book, and it's always been figured that whoever did the show would have to buy him out. I wonder if they're maybe trying to see if they can avoid that and just use Nelson's book? Would be interesting to see if somebody could pull that off, but I wouldn't place money on it at this point. |
||||||
| kaelidancer |
The US Tour used yet another version (maybe an earlier draft, or an unauthorized patchwork) of these lyrics as well... for Florence in the show closer. It's not in the transcript I have, but on my US tour recording, Florence clearly sings the new lyrics, except where noted:
I'm not a fan of using this song as the closer, and I'm not sure how authorized they are, but there it is. |
||||||
| Hans |
I wonder what they will do about the lyrics, in that case, since the Stockholm ones largely disregarded the original TR words and style. |
||||||
| Brother Marvin Hinten, S. |
It's a good question indeed. Over to you, Tim. |