The Beautiful Game (musical) The Beautiful Game (musical) 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 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)
Andrew Lloyd Webber countered such accusations. He acknowledged a similarity between the Andante movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor and the "Jesus Christ Superstar" song "I Don't Know How to Love Him", but wrote that Lloyd Webber: ...brings a new dramatic tension to Mendelssohn's original melody through the confused emotions of Mary Magdalene. The opening theme may be Mendelssohn, but the rhythmic and harmonic treatment along with new lines of highly effective melodic development are Lloyd Webber's. The song works in its own right as its many performers and audiences can witness. The songwriter Ray Repp claimed in a court case