When he began researching how to plot their revisions, Buck started collecting articles about how business and politics were tied between Russia and the U.S. “We thought it would be appropriate to go beyond the original as a metaphor and actually address the fact that it seems politics are in bed with business, and vice versa.” “What’s going on now, with the intrusion into our democracy by a foreign power, is actually much more concrete than some of the fears during the Cold War,” he continued. I chose to end it one way that he suggested and then add an epilogue. “Rice encouraged adapters to rearrange things in hopes of helping it land better. “Every version that has come out since the original concept album and since the original stage version has been different,” said Buck, a 35-year veteran of both performing and professing opera and musical theater. To return “Chess” to its initial impact, Buck and Daniel Gary Busby, the show’s musical director and the Drama Department’s chair, went back to the original London version, tweaking lyrics and dialogue to give the story 2017 resonance and its characters greater depth. “It was over-produced and bloated with extra music and convoluted storylines.” “Understandably so,” said Robin Buck, who directs the cast of UCI graduate and undergraduate students. Two years later, it came ashore in America only to be beached on Broadway and eviscerated by New York Times critic Frank Rich. The six performances launch the 2017-18 season of UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts Department of Drama and its theme “The Business of Politics/The Politics of Business.”īenny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the composer-performers behind the phenomenally successful ABBA, and Tim Rice, “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Lion King” lyricist, worked five years to ready “Chess” for its triumphant 1986 premiere in London. “Chess,” the 1980s rock opera that infused international chessboard showdowns with Cold War espionage and love-triangle intrigue, will come to the Irvine Barclay Theatre Nov.

The breakout a rock opera