All Musicals Are Adaptations

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    "So start off on the right foot and select a story that is all prepared for you. The translation of that story to musical form is quite complex enough. Within that frame you will find more than adequate challenge to your originality and enough on which to experiment."

    —Alan Jay Lerner, Advice to Young Musical Writers

    Many musicals - arguably most - are adaptations. There are two major reasons for this tendency:

    a) Dramaturgy. Many musicals will have separate artists working on each aspect of the text - book, music and lyrics. Some musicals will have more than one person working on each aspect, and then you have the influence of directors, choreographers and producers. It's hard enough to write a good story as it is, so adapting an existing and proven story provides everybody working on the show with a touchstone.

    b) Commerciality. Primarily, musical theatre has always been a commercial medium that tries to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Moreover, as the sheer costs of staging a Broadway or West End musical continue to skyrocket, producers are under increasing pressure to guarantee their shows will be smash hits. Audiences are more likely to come see a musical (or play, or film ...) based on a property with which they are already familiar, so adaptations are a safer bet than original works, though of course they're not sure hits (as proven by the line of unsuccessful musical adaptations of Cyrano De Bergerac stretching back to 1899).

    This trope is common enough that it would be more useful to list exceptions and parodies than straight examples, and it is often said "great musicals are not written, they are re-written". Note, however, that it can be difficult to define what counts as an "adaptation". Whilst many musicals draw their narrative structure directly from the movie, novel, stage play, comic book, short story, ancient Greek myth etc. on which they were based, many other musicals take their inspiration from a variety of unusual sources - a historical figure or event, a painting, a concept - but provide an original narrative. Going back to the roots of musical theater, a large number of operas are also adaptations of older material... and a fair number of them have been turned into musicals.

    Incidentally, this is why so many so many musicals are subtitled The Musical!

    Examples of All Musicals Are Adaptations include:

    Aversions

    Parodies

    Film - Live-Action

    • The Producers notes a musical adaptation of Hamlet, called Funny Boy; it isn't depicted, but its audience informs us "It's the worst show in town!" in the first scene of the stage version, which takes place on its opening and closing night.
    • The only thing preventing a Star Wars musical is George Lucas's dignity (dear God, we're screwed). But it has been adapted into an opera.
    • A Tale of Two Cities is also staged as a musical (Two Cities) in the Martin Short comedy A Simple Wish.
    • In the movie The Tall Guy Jeff Goldblum's character, trying to get into serious drama, finds himself starring in Elephant!, a musical version of The Elephant Man.

    Live-Action TV

    • Mad TV did a skit in the late 1990s spoofing how campy the Batman movie franchise had become by having the 5th one done as a Broadway musical. In fact, Warner Bros. actually had Jim Steinman and David Ives working on a Batman musical for several years, but it didn't pan out.
      • Don't forget Erin Brockovich: "I may dress like a cheap table dancer / but give me a call if you think you've got cancer.."
    • On 30 Rock, Jenna has been in musical versions of Con Air and Mystic Pizza.
    • Gilligan's Island had the castaways staging a musical of version of Hamlet to try to persuade a producer to return to civilisation and take them with him. He steals their idea, returns to civilisation and leaves them stranded.
    • In a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, E. Henry Thripshaw announces that he hopes to turn his next disease into a musical (after his first disease became an In Name Only film).

    Periodicals

    • MAD Magazine had "Keep on Trekkin'", a Star Trek musical that addressed the post-cancellation success of TOS in reruns in The Seventies. It ends with the cast turning down a network executive's offer of a Revival because they're making so much money already—it was written before the movie franchise was established in 1979.
      • "Coming Musicals" in MAD #41 suggested that, when Broadway starts running out of likely source material, new musicals could be based on telephone directories, railroad timetables, and cook books, producing song hits like "The Bell-Box Of My Heart" and "Oh, Your Lips Say Central Standard."
      • MAD #100 did an article conceiving musical versions of Moby Dick, Julius Caesar, A Tale of Two Cities and Tarzan.
      • Later issues had musical versions of Star Wars ("The Force and I") and The Lord of the Rings ("The Ring and I"). Note that Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities and The Lord of the Rings have since been adapted into serious stage musicals, and Disney's Tarzan received a Screen to Stage Adaptation. (Lord of the Rings has also since been... rather less seriously adapted.)

    Theatre

    • In Andrew Lippa's version of The Wild Party, the brothers d'Armano write a musical called Good Heavens, based on the Bible.

    Web Comics

    Web Original

    Western Animation

    Mr. Burns: A musical about a doll? Why not a musical about the common cat? Or the King of Siam?

      • When Andre Previn made A Streetcar Named Desire into an opera, he explicitly cited the "Simpsons scenario" ("Stella, Stella, can't you hear me yella?") as an instance of what he tried to avoid. In fact, the libretto simply sets the original text of the play to music.
      • And who could forget "Kickin' It: A Musical Journey Through the Betty Ford Center"?
      • And the musical adaption of Itchy and Scratchy, parodying the style of the Broadway version of The Lion King.
    • The Fairly OddParents is another twofer: Waterworld: The Musical and, as a Continuity Nod to the episode parodying action movies, Loose Cannon Cop Who Doesn't Play by the Rules: The Musical.
    • A cutaway reveals Peter once performed in Red Dawn - The Musical on Family Guy. "I'm a Wolverine/And my hatred keeps me warm..."
    • Batman Beyond had a scene featuring Terry taking Bruce Wayne to a musical about...Batman. The sad part is that the idea for it came from the fact that someone actually proposed a Batman musical in real life.

    Bruce: ...you hate me, don't you.

    • An episode of The Critic features Jay and Doris going to Andrew Lloyd Webber's newest musical, Hunch!, an adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The sequence takes swipes at the commercialism ("Brought to you by Toyota: the hatchback fit for a hunchback!") and strange staging common to ALW's musicals. Note that this episode predated the Disney adaptation of Hunchback—which had its own problems trying to make the story a musical that could also move merchandise—by two years, making this Hilarious in Hindsight.
    • Rugrats has Reptar On Ice, an Ice Capades-like musical show based on a Godzilla-like action film franchise.
    • In a recent[when?] episode of The Venture Brothers, Rusty wants to make a musical about his life (a Johnny Quest boy-adventurer sort of childhood with its own cartoon show), though this never gets off the ground. He does get a duet with the in-universe version of Spiderman, the Brown Widow, which might be a parody of Spider Man Turn Off the Dark.
    • One episode of Phineas and Ferb revisits one of their early adventures:

    "Y'know Ferb, one of the best times we ever had was when we built that roller coaster. We should do it again! This time, as a musical! Whaddaya say? We'll do all the same things, except we'll break into spontaneous singing and choreography with no discernible music source!"


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