The book musical format was once again used, though sections of dialogue were mostly short and infrequent. He spent most of the time looking and behaving like a spoilt child, no doubt a product of his childhood, but a trait that left the audience feeling little pity for him, man or boy. This production was squarely focused on the Soviet viewpoint and only Freddie remained to provide the American angle, which constantly painted a less than complimentary picture of the average American. The character of Walter was cut from the production as was his merchandising interests (thus also The Merchandisers song) and his CIA connections. Many felt this reduction in time span further reduced the impact and authenticity of the romance between Anatoly and Florence, leaving little space for true development or exploration of their emotions and feelings. The period of the action was contracted for the Swedish version and now took place over just four days in 1986. This, however, was overcome by having a short snippet from the original album recording played during a brief dance scene in a night club. Many thought this was a strange choice as it excluded any chance of including the shows most famous number, One Night In Bangkok. The setting this time would however be Merano. It was decided that the single location and one tournament format, as had been adopted in Sydney would be retained. It seemed the show was in good hands and admirers of the score were eagerly awaiting the transformation of Chess into its fourth major new version. This time it was to be Lars Rudolfsson, who had previously experienced great success with Bjorn and Benny’s masterpiece Kristina Fran Duvemala, when it premiered at Storan Malmo Musikteater in 1995 and subsequently played in Stockholm and Gothenburg, becaming Sweden’s most successful musical of all time.
There was also the opportunity to add some new songs and music all of which made Chess På Svenska a truly unique presentation.Īs with Sydney the project was very much a work of collaboration with a director. This gave him the chance to expand or even completely change the meanings within the songs, which in turn meant that this Chess would be the most completely different to any previous version.
Bjorn and Benny were given the go ahead to more or less do whatever they wanted with the book and of course Bjorn was lined up with the task of writing Swedish lyrics for the songs.
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