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 With rewritten lyrics it became "King Herod's Song" in their third musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar" (1970). The planned follow-up to "Jesus Christ Superstar" was a musical comedy based on the Jeeves and Wooster novels by P. G. Wodehouse. Tim Rice was uncertain about this venture, partly because of his concern that he might not be able to do justice to the novels that he and Lloyd Webber so admired. After doing some initial work on the lyrics, he pulled out of the project and Lloyd Webber subsequently wrote the musical "Jeeves" with Alan Ayckbourn, who provided the book and lyrics.