During World War Two, Portugal remained neutral. Many of the people who found themselves there had little choice as to where they might live, work or even survive. Among those who had had little choice, was Alexander Alekhine, the World Chess Champion.
Alexander is a man looking for a life away from sitting alone in his hotel room, with nothing but a chess board on a table and dinner in his lap. He is looking for inspiration, looking for his muse and ultimately; a way to return to his previous glory. Perhaps he has found it…?
PLEASE NOTE: Although this story is based on real life people and situations, it has been heavily fictionalized and should not be seen as historically accurate.
CAST:
Ian Carter as Alexander
Howard Russell as Gerald
David Taylor as Boris
Saime Higson as Olga
Jasmine Warwick as Lilian
And Eletta Giusto as Caissa
CREDITS:
Written by Christopher Bellamy & Brian Stephenson
Edited and Directed by Peter Beeston
Sound Effects via: http://www.freesound.org
Music: Sunset, Fading Rays Waltz, Life’s Composing, When the Lights Came On, Comfort in a Bottle, Nothing Lasts Forever, Its Only Mourning, A Note is My Gift; all by Kai Engel
This work is released under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license
.BONUS ITEM
Want to know a little bit more about the character of Caissa, the goddess of chess? Caissa originated in a 658-line poem called Scacchia, Ludus published in 1527 by Hieronymus Vida, which describes in Latin Virgilian hexameters a chess game between Apollo and Mercury in the presence of the other gods. The pioneering English orientalist Sir William Jones re-used Vida’s character Caïssa in 1763. In his poem, Caïssa initially repels the advances of the god of war, Mars. Spurned, Mars seeks the aid of the god of sport Euphron, brother of Venus, who creates the game of chess as a gift for Mars to win Caïssa’s favor.
As we strongly believe that it’s important that all classical texts have spoken recordings made available, and as we couldn’t find one available for this piece. We’ve recorded it ourselves, which you can hear below on our soundcloud page.
Everyone worked so hard on this, and I’, very impressed the results. What with the sound and music and everything, listening back it felt like we could have all been sat in the bar with Alexander. From your very nervous Olga it was a pleasure to work on this with you.
More!
As a chess enthusiast and chess problemist, I was fascinated by this tale of Alekhine and Anderson (whom I knew) in Lisbon. A most worthwhile radio play! The mystique of chess makes the dramatization interesting even for non-chess player.
The tragic tale is skilfully embroidered, but the underlying truth really does deserve to be better known . Alekhine had moved ever-westward in Europe to escape the Nazi strangle hold. He was escape Portugal. Anderson DFC befriended him. In spite of his fondness for drink – the other tales that could be told! – Alekhinee was indeed a great World Champion.
I did the authors and the players of Last Gambit in Lisbon insufficient justice in my recent review which was not helped by some careless spelling mistakes and omissions, in my distracted rush to express my appreciation and put another job behind me.
Of course, I should have typed…”even for non-chess players”. Again, “He was desperate to escape Portugal. Gerald Anderson (Distinguished Flying Cross) …. “Alehine was indeed a great World Champion”.
With my mistakes rectified (I hope), I can now congratulate the authors and the players, as I should have done first time round. It was worthy of a Radio 4 Afternoon Play at its best.
I agree with Ron Fenton – more, please!
I’m glad you liked it. Although I went to boarding school with several chess enthusiasts, I had never heard this story. I’m rubbish at chess myself, but love a good story and Alekhine certainly provided that. After researching him prior to recording, I must admit he didn’t leave my mind for a long time, and I’m now working on adapting the script to another medium.