What The F&%/ Is Up With Broadway?
Broadway, the once spectacular stage that gave many aspiring writers, singers, and performers the opportunity of a lifetime, has now reduced itself to telling stories that have already been told. With previews for a new musical based on the book and feature film The Great Gatsby, it seems Broadway has become more reliant on adaptations of beloved films than original scripts.
The process of getting a show to Broadway is complicated and long, sometimes even taking years to produce, as was the case with Hamilton, which began production in 2008 but didn’t hit Broadway until 2016. The first step to getting a show on Broadway is what stops many original shows from existing: the workshop. A common starting point for many Broadway musicals, the workshop is where stories, casts, and characters are developed, cut, or replaced to refine the product for investors. After six to 10 weeks, potential investors are invited to see the production and can determine whether or not the project will continue off Broadway, have a full production, or get rejected for the time being.
An adaptation can easily win investors over. It is a pre-existing idea that requires only minor adjustments to staging and music; thus, it is practically guaranteed to succeed. This is prominent with the recent surge of musicals based on Disney animated films. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King are just a few of the many already-put-together musicals now on the theater stage. And the existence of licensing comes into fruition as well, with the ability to produce certain intellectual property like well-known and praised Disney films on different types of stages. According to Current President of Disney Theatrical Group, Thomas Schumander, “With licensing, you have a standard. My affection is so deep, and I kept trying to say, within the company, [licensing] won’t degrade it. It’s actually going to build affection for it.”
Because more theaters are able to easily acquire licenses from tentpole studios such as Disney and Paramount Pictures, and as copyright properties (Steamboat Willie, for example, at the start of 2024) enter the public domain, it seems more convenient to shape and form an existing story than create something new.
Musical adaptations have always existed on Broadway though, especially within the last decade. Movies such as Mean Girls (2004), Anastasia (1997), and Heathers (1988) have been adapted into critically and commercially successful musicals, praised by fans old and new. These movies turned musicals were able to build on their original property, either by keeping the faithfulness of the story, like with Heathers (2014) that only slightly altered scenes from the 1988 movie or changing characters entirely. For example: Aaron Samuels from the Mean Girls musical, he is actually an intelligent guy with a personality! They are small changes that differentiate from the original for the better.
On the other hand, many recent adaptations have not been as praised or successful as previous ones have. For example, The Great Gatsby and Bad Cinderella. Critics were able to see the previews of The Great Gatsby, and while majority praise the soundtrack and acting from the performers, they notably mention their disdain for the lack of subtlety the original novel established. Though The Great Gatsby received positive notes from the public, Bad Cinderella, or Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella’s once positive West-End reviews immediately turned sour upon its Broadway debut. One harsh review by Jesse Green from The New York Times complained, “[Bad Cinderella] has none of the grit of the Grimm tale, the sweetness of the Disney movie or the grace (let alone the melodic delight) of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Instead, it’s surprisingly vulgar, sexed-up and dumbed-down: a parade of hustling women in bustiers and shirtless pec-rippling hunks. Finally, a Cinderella for streetwalkers and gym rats!”
To mention a similar situation, Broadway musicals such as Dear Evan Hansen and Fiddler on the Roof — which was adapted from the book Tevye and His Daughters — can be made into films, but not all musical to film adaptations are made equal. The new Mean Girls (2024) film is a rendition of the musical,inspired by the original 2004 film,albeit with some songs and characters changed or removed. Despite the 2004 film and the musical achieving popularity and cult classic status, the 2024 film is neither critically nor publicly praised.
These types of films have existed since the 1950s, with films such as Little Shops of Horrors (1986) and Grease (1978) becoming both culturally significant and popular amongst musical fans. Yet the latest attempts at turning Broadway musicals into films have been unsuccessful. Perhaps it’s because there is no more original content in the musical realm, adaptations are everywhere now.
The assumed reason there is no sense of originality is because “there is no current writer who is writing a good and original musical,” but that is not the case! Andrew Lloyd Webber made dozens of recognizable and well-loved musicals such as Cats and Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running Broadway show of all time; and yet, his newest show, Bad Cinderella, closed after three months. As critic Amelia Merrill from New York Theatre Guide explains in her review, “Bad Cinderella does not live up to its potential to deliver an empowering thesis. It hopes a familiar story and a veteran Broadway composer will be enough.” A title and connections can only get you so far, but the real spark to achieve greatness is the passion and dedication to build a clear story, whether it is an adaptation or an original narrative.
The Great Gatsby is noted to have been one of many renditions that have not met the same standards as the original novel, the property is the most difficult to copy in any format. Even the 2013 feature film was not well received by critics according to a 48 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. The name The Great Gatsby brings interest and chances for profit; the story is well-known, especially amongst high school students in their English classes, yet it is suffering the same fate as Bad Cinderella. The two shows prioritize name recognition over the actual creative ideas they may introduce. Therefore, original stories are shoved to the side in favor of a safety net of famous names and works who look like they have the proper idea and passion but are shown to feel the opposite.
Despite this struggling situation, there have been efforts to make Broadway more original. The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT), a national service organization in New York dedicated to assisting musical theater with festivals and conferences, created the Frank Young Fund for New Musicals to offer more funding for original and promising musicals to get them on the right footing. They have three categories of grants that are issued out: the Writer’s Residency Grant, the Project Development Grant, and the Production Grant. The Writer’s Residency Grant, which supports collaborations between producers and writers, only opens applications in November and May, and is issued twice a year. On the other hand, the Project Development Grant and Production Grant are only open from December to January, and are issued once per year. To learn more about the Frank Young Fund for New Musicals, you can visit the NAMT website for more information. All grants are issued to non-profit theater members and have their own set of rules and deadlines.
According to long-time Broadway producer Ken Davenport, “82 percent of Broadway musicals in the last 30 years have been adaptations of some kind.” Even beyond 30 years, there were adapted musicals such as Les Misérables and West Side Story! But unlike our modern Broadway lineup, there were always original Broadway shows, like The Rocky Horror Show or In the Heights, to create a balance between the two types of shows. Reworking a known property is not hurtful; sometimes they can help develop and improve the original source, like Beetlejuice and Heathers, in which character development and relationships change to better fit the new medium, but the immediate jump to renditions than new original content raises concern for what Broadway’s future entails.
Photo Courtesy of Britannica
