Now that anything and everything is being greenlighted for the Broadway treatment, even when it shouldn’t be (I’m talking to you, Spider-Man), what works do you think would translate especially well to the Broadway stage, as either a play or a musical?
I have several ideas, but I will just share my #1, so as not to steal everyone’s thunder. I would love to see a Broadway production of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, the Genesis album. It wouldn’t take much tweaking - Peter Gabriel was in his dress-up phase and the album is already filled with theatrical images. It would, however, have to be either made as a period piece (or the references to Times Square being filled with homeless, and Rael’s graffiti habit, would somehow have to be updated). But overall, it would rock!
What have you all got?
Plan Nine from Outer Space – The Musical – This already exists. In fact, I think there are mu;ltiple versions of it. Some guys at the University of Utah made one version (that I just missed seeing), which later surfaced in the Midwest. Another version seems to emanate from Canada. If Little Shop of Horrors can be a hit, why not Plan Nine?
The First Nudie Musical – Bruce Kimmel’s movie already has all the songs and everything. All you have to do is stage it. You should avoid, however, adapting his later Starship/Naked Space/The Creature that Wasn’t Nice, despite its song “I Want to Eat Your Face”.
What about classic novels from literature? Bronte sisters? (or is that sacrilege?)
Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love.
ETA: Also, Shock Treatment, the Rocky Horror sequel. It could be revitalised as a stage show, the original movie has a bad reputation but the songs were good and could work in a different environment.
My musical PAX, about a returning Vietnam War veteran, with music by Tom Paxton
I’m currently working on a musical called “Love, Lloyd,” based on all the songs with Love in their titles by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Pirates of the Caribbean. Not that I have any idea what the songs would be like, but I think it could be an action packed pirate adventure show. Swinging from the rigging, sword fights, ghosts, it’s fun.
Day of the Jackal – the Musical – Imagine choreographed ambush sequences, the OSA heads singing a three-part invitation to The Jackal, the French government board asking Commisaire Lebel to track down the Jackal, the gun-buying sequence climaxing in a first half curtain as the melon explodes … and so on.
Goldfinger – the Musical I can see Auric Goldfinger singing his plan to the Hoods Chorus, the first half reaching a climactic scene with Bond strapped down on the Laser Table* (Goldfinger sings “No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Die!”) and the curtain coming down as Bond is shot (with the trank gun). Then in the seconed half the Pussy Galore Flying Circus dancers and the Bond/Galore ballet, followed by the Fort Know Attack on stage and the awesome Bond/Oddjob fight, culminating in a slightly changed ending where Goldfinger is killed in the vault, and everything is set right in a final number.
*As in most adaptations nowadays, this adapts the movie to the stage, not Fleming’s original novel.
Night of the Living Dead would be an interesting choice. Not as a dark comedy with musical numbers but as a straight-up horror play about a group of people trapped inside a house facing death.
And a really bizarre idea: The Godfather as an opera. It’s got the epic tragic theme already.
I think a Broadway production of Yellow Submarine could be interesting.
Are all Broadway plays musicals?
If not I have always thought that “Reservoir Dogs” would be a phenomenal play. Very few actors, minimalistic sets, etc.
MtM
Sounds cool; did you write the book? Just curious.
No: there are “straight” (aka non-musical) plays and there are musicals.
I worked on it for years, and finally finished it while my arm was in a cast. It reflects the troubles of one returning vet coming home and being disgraced for serving his country. Thank God Paxton wrote so many excellent songs about the war.
The Catcher in the Rye as a musical.
Hey, it worked for Les Miserables.
Ben Elton wrote a novel called Blast from the Past, a psychological thrill about a British woman, her stalker, and the American soldier who comes to visit her one night. It takes place mostly in her London flat.
Since Elton has already written some musicals, and is the type of multi-multi-multi-talented person that sets my teeth on edge, I thin he should get together with that other Elton of musicals fame (John) and do a musical. It would be fabulous.
Two of the Kinks’ concept albums would make great musicals, in my opinion:
First, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.
Second, Arthur. Now, that album was originally SUPPOSED to be the soundtrack to a BBC TV movie that was never made. Assuming the teleplay still exists somewhere, I still think that the story of Arthur’s life could make for a great musical.
Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts” is screaming for a musical or a movie or something.