# It's time for a new literature based musical
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 5, 2004, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657 "2004-02-05T13:27:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@RitzyRae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitzyRae)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657/21 "2004-02-12T02:12:35Z")
> [@Sampiro](#):
>
> Much older literature that could furnish musical turns:
>
> _Tristan & Isolde_ (a musical as opposed to an opera)
I second Tristan & Isolde. This is the only one that came to mind and it’s really not new. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Gamaliel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gamaliel)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657/22 "2004-02-12T04:06:01Z")
_The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven_ and _The Gods Must Have Blood_ would be great titles to put on a marquee.
My favorite idea would be a _Catcher in the Rye_ adaptation called _Holden! The Musical_
---
### Author:  [@thegreyathena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thegreyathena)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2004, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657/23 "2004-02-12T04:43:40Z")
When I was in London a couple years ago I saw a marquee for ‘Hard Times: The Musical’, so I guess anything’s possible.
Pride and Prejudice has also been done as a terrible, tanked musical called ‘First Impressions’ (which might have been classed as an operetta, but I don’t think so).
I nominate Coleridge’s unfinished (or do you think it _was_ finished? where are the Romantics out there?) poem ‘Christabel.’ Totally creepy, but with happy upbeat songs about the father/daughter/happy home, etc., love songs about the absent lover . . . then the creepy stuff. With someone like a younger Elaine Page as Geraldine.
For composer I have no idea. I might nominate a cross between the composers of Jekyll and Hyde (the London version, before people started changing it) and Ragtime.
---
### Author:  [@ErinPuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ErinPuff)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2004, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657/24 "2004-02-15T23:30:59Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#):
>
> Hunchback of Notre Dame…it would have to be called “Hunch!”
There’s a French musical of that (Notre-Dame de Paris). It’s kind of weird and probably really bad if you ask anyone with taste, but I love it anyway. I have the DVD. There was an English translation, and it played in Las Vegas for a while, but the translation was horrid.
I’m pretty sure there was a Tale of Two Cities musical, but it never got anywhere. From what I’ve heard of it, it was quite derivative of Les Miz.
---
### Author:  [@FisherQueen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FisherQueen)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2004, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657/25 "2004-02-16T00:01:00Z")
Lolita.
No, I’m serious. I think if you got just the right mix of serious and comic, it might work as a musical. Or be the most spectacular trainwreck Broadway has ever seen. Either way, well worth the money.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-for-a-new-literature-based-musical/227657.md?page=1)