CHESS Hymn to Chess Quartet - A Model of Decorum and Tranquility I Know Him So Well
The 1986 musical, Chess, was a collaboration between Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, of ABBA fame, and Tim Rice, who had recently penned Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita with Andrew Lloyd Webber. The story satirised the hostile political atmosphere of the Cold War and the “chess match of the century” between Bobby Fisher of the United States and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union.
The Deal
At the first game’s opening ceremony, a hymn is sung to celebrate the match. The American player, Freddie Trumper, stages an effective and insulting walkout on the Soviet player, Anatoly Sergievsky. In the ensuing quartet, Freddie’s second, Florence Vassy, tries to defend his behaviour to a sneering Molokov (Anatoly’s KGB second). She meets her soon-to-be lover, Anatoly, for the first time. Meanwhile, the Arbiter of the contest continues to outline the rules. I Know Him So Well was the undoubted hit of the show. Florence recalls how well she knows the lover who has just left her while his wife, Svetlana, does the same. In Act Two, Anatoly has defected to the West and is offered various bribes involving Florence, her family and the standard musical theatre love-triangles between both of them, Freddie and Svetlana. These all come to the fore in The Deal where all the principal characters seek to manipulate each other for their own personal gain.