The musical Chess originated as an idea conceived by Jesus Christ Superstar book author Tim Rice, neatly merging public interest in high-level chess competition with a dark atmosphere born of the depths of the Cold War. Rice hoped to work once again with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, but Webber was occupied in the early 1980s with work on Cats. So Rice turned to the Swedish songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, whose interests had shifted away from their participation in the pop supergroup Abba. The story deals with a romantic and across-the-board competition between two chess players, designated simply as The American and The Russian. Chess was first released in album form, in 1984. The album is still in print and selling well; it yielded a hit single in the Abba-like "One Night in Bangkok," which was an international success and sold over three million copies. (One of the chess matches on which the plot turns takes place in Bangkok, and the song appears as the American player, after a quarrel with his romantic partner, goes out to experience the city's notorious nightlife.) The score as a whole mixes a conventional stage musical language with rock and Europop elements. The technically challenging stage production did not open until 1986 in London. Though it taxed the resources of its backers, they recouped their investments when the show ran for three years. A Broadway production, heavily revised with added spoken dialogue, was a flop. But the show's popularity has outlasted the Cold War; several other revamped versions have circulated in productions mounted on both sides of the Atlantic.

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