The Beautiful Game (musical): History and Key Facts

The Beautiful Game (sometimes performed as The Boys in the Photograph) is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton about a group of teenagers growing up during The Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1969.

The title of the musical (The Beautiful Game) is a commonly used reference to association football, the origins of which are disputed. The plot, which is centred on a local football (soccer) team, focuses on the attempt to overcome the violence that has engulfed their community. The Catholic team has one atheist player, Del (who comes from a Protestant family) and the coach is a priest. The musical chronicles some of the key players during the emerging political and religious violence. Some of the players become IRA volunteers, and another is knee-capped. The musical also chronicles the emotional change in the protagonist from political ambivalence to becoming an IRA volunteer.

The most successful song from the score was "Our Kind of Love", which had originally been performed by Kiri Te Kanawa as "The Heart Is Slow to Learn". It was cut from the re-worked version of the show in 2008, and used as the title song to Lloyd Webber's sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies.

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