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)
The Beautiful Game (musical) to "The Phantom of the Opera", "Love Never Dies". In 1998, Lloyd Webber invited Elton to dinner to discuss the possibility of the latter working on a rewrite of the script for "Starlight Express", updating the humour of the original. Elton declined but suggested the possibility of a new musical, with an entirely original storyline, having observed that most musicals were based upon existing ideas. The two writers settled upon the idea of setting a story amid The Troubles in Belfast. The world premiere of "The Beautiful Game" opened on 26 September 2000 at the Cambridge Theatre in London and