Tim Rice had an interest in CHESS, followed the game and occasionally played. In 1972 a new era began in the chess world when the Russian world champion of the time, Boris Spassky, was challenged by an American CHESS genius, Bobby Fischer, in Iceland. Fischer was an obnoxious, self-centered primadonna who voiced his opinions readily, complaining about everything from the colour of the squares on the board to the noise of childrens' sweet wrappers. These actions dramatically altered peoples ideas of the game as boring - it was East versus West and at the peak of the Cold War the world's attention was grabbed.

The idea for the musical CHESS was conceived by Tim Rice around 1980. It was to be a story about a love triangle tangled up within the World Chess Championships between America and Russia. The story was not about the game of CHESS itself but rather to mirror it in such a way that the actual players become pawns in a political game.

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Book & Lyrics TIM RICE	Music BJORN ULVAEUS & BENNY ANDERSSON
Director KEVIN GAUNTLETT	Music Director PETER DODSWORTH
Choreographer ZOE ELLEN	Lighting Designers MICHAEL & JAMES SIMPSON
Trumper KEVIN STUART	Sergievsky GEORG TORMAN
Florence MELODY-JANE FAULKNER	Svetlana TRACY PRIZEMAN
de Courcey CHRIS ARDEN	Molokov DAVID HODGSON
Arbiter PHILIP NETSCHER	click here to see Cast Profiles