The last time I went to the library, I got on an Agatha Christie kick and started pulling all kinds of things off that section of the shelves into my bag. One of these was Black Coffee, an adaptation by Charles Osborne from Agatha Christie’s play of the same name. It is, nominally, a Poirot mystery.
In actual fact, it is neither genuine Poirot nor is it an actual mystery. I got about 25 pages in and gave up. It appears that Mr. Osborne largely considers “adaptation” to mean transcribing the dialogue exactly and the stage directions liberally. Not only is his writing wooden and plodding, but the more or less directly transcribed stage direction decks the murderer out in metaphorical neon lights. Something that is able to be done subtly and quickly simultaneously with other acting business on the stage is very obvious in the kind of writing that Osborne has committed.
It’s easily the worst stage-to-page adaptation I’ve ever read. Even the novelizations of movies are usually done a bit more stylishly.
So what’s your worst? It can be stage-to-page or screen-to-page or whatever. I’m more looking for adaptations TO a written form, though, rather than the other way around. A thread for rotten adaptations FROM the written form would quickly overwhelm the original intent here.