Most bizarre liberties taken with source material in a theatre adaptation?

Well I was in a super illegal production of Spelling Bee where the director rewrote the script to make it a telethon and created these weird "chorus people" who were actually devils from hell sent to possess the spellers with visions of greed and power, and then at the end Barfee hung himself. So there's that...

I saw a church production of Joseph where apparently the director "didn't like Tim Rice" (according to someone I knew in the ensemble), and changed a bunch of lyrics. I'd say 30-40%. The only one I actually remember was "made him master of his website" instead of "made him leader of his household." It was like that.

Bizarre is a matter of opinion, but certainly audacious:

THESE THREE, William Wyler's 1936 film adaptation of THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, which de-gayed the play
ON A CLEAR DAY, Michael Mayer's 2011 Broadway revival, which split the co-starring role of Daisy/Melinda into opposite gender incarnations and pseudo-homoeroticized the libretto

The first was surprisingly successful, not the pale bowdlerization one might expect; the theme of the play was much altered and, of course, diluted, but, strangely, to a great extent, the script (by Hellman herself) remained effective.

The second, perhaps not surprisingly, is generally viewed as a gross misfire.

Updated On: 8/17/15 at 10:30 PM

"Clarification:

I'm not talking about people making odd choices in their specific production of a show, but rather making an odd choice adapting a film or book into a musical or play.

darquegk has the right idea!

"

That's not what what it means to take 'creative license' with something. What you're really talking about is actually defined as 'adaptation'/'source alteration', not taking 'creative license' with something.

""Peter and the Starcatcher" presents Black Stache onstage as an extraordinarily camp, fey Groucho Marx/Noel Coward hybrid, while in the book he is a hulking, uncouth monster.

"Matilda" shows the Wormwoods onstage as trashy young decidedly-not-Londoners, on film as sleazy American con artists, and in the book as Dickensian grotesques.

"

Even though the OP says otherwise, that can't be what he/she was talking about because, as I just pointed out above, what he/she is really talking about is 'adaptation'/'source alteration'.

The term 'creative license' would apply to the individual director of a particular existing play or musical making staging/directorial choices that alter their individual production from what was originally intended.

Updated On: 8/18/15 at 12:04 AM

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn combined "The Woman in White" and "The Signal-man" plots for the musical of "The Woman in White." It's how the train scene/big ending came to be for the stage version, but one is by Wilkie Collins and the other is by Charles Dickens (ironically, the two were good friends)...

Perhaps "taking liberties with source material" is a better phrasing. Though I do think creative license could be applied in the situation it does seem to have caused some confusion.

Updated On: 8/18/15 at 01:04 AM

Some of these are making me laugh really hard.

Anyway, obviously Disney's The Little Mermaid is quite different from the original Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. What with the former's tragic ending and all.

Gaston Leroux's Phantom has an entirely different tone (and some additional characters, like the Persian) if you compare it to Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical.

I myself adapted Kate Chopin's The Awakening into a chamber opera that is a simplified version of the original novella.

I don't know that it's "bizarre" but in the book that inspired "Once On This Island" Ti-Moune dies and is pushed into a gutter. Becoming a tree was inserted to give the musical an upbeat ending.

Oh, come now. I think it's universally acknowledged that Chernow avoids "fawning" and "hagiography."

But at any rate, the musical absolutely does. It is clearly taking an objective look at ALL the Founders.

From Amazon.com's summary of reviews: "One fault of the book is that Chernow is so convinced of Hamilton’s excellence that his narrative sometimes becomes hagiographic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Chernow’s account of the infamous duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804. He describes Hamilton’s final hours as pious, while Burr, Jefferson, and Adams achieve an almost cartoonish villainy at the news of Hamilton’s passing."

From the Boston Globe: "Unfortunately, Chernow, in his first foray into the 18th century, leans too heavily on this (Hamilton's son's posthumous, uncorroborated bio) and other outdated antiquarian sources as a substitute for deep archival research. Not at all at home in the foreign country of that century, despite the fact that he traveled widely in Hamilton's and his family's footsteps, he depends too much on the kind of history served up by amateur old-house historians and innkeepers."

"A deeper problem is one of proof. Chernow all too frequently uses speculative constructions such as ''must have," ''it seems," ''one can hazard an educated guess." There are limits to the degree of supposition in history and biography that are stricter than those in historical fiction. It is a line Chernow crosses, imagining more than he can prove."

"Bending to the more sensational story, Chernow demolishes Hamilton's mother, turning her into a floozie. He depends on the unchallenged and uncorroborated accusations of her first husband's divorce papers. He depicts Rachel Faucette Lavien Hamilton, daughter of a wealthy and respected Huguenot planter and physician, as the sleep-around daughter of a seamstress."

It appears to not be "universally acknowledged" at all.

As far as the show "taking an objective look at ALL the Founders" - well, nothing in the theatre is truly "objective," nor is there any reason to pretend it is. A point of view is hardly a bad thing in a work of art.

Updated On: 8/18/15 at 01:35 PM

Broadway's Dance of the Vampires barely even resembles the Fearless Vampire Killers film.