Adaptation in Musical Theatre

Adaptation in Musical Theatre examines adaptation as inherent to musical theatre, an art form with an established history of recycling existing texts, through a concise overview of the concept and several contemporary case studies that illustrate this relationship.

Adaptations are everywhere in popular culture, wherein most texts have been experienced elsewhere in some form. Adaptation in Musical Theatre focuses on the inherent relationship between adaptation and musical theatre, an art form in which most musicals are adaptations of existing texts. Despite a shift in production model in recent decades, where many musicals are now based on internationally known texts from conglomerates like Disney, adding song and dance to an existing work is a long-established trend has provided a plethora of different structural and stylistic choices across the musical theatre canon.

Through multiple contemporary case studies, this book examines the various forms of adaptation in musical theatre, with each case study offering a different approach to adapting existing work. From Les Misérables to Wicked, by way of Legally Blonde and Fun Home, this book proposes that despite adaptations often being denigrated by critics as lazy and safe-bet choices for producers, the resulting musicals are incredibly diverse and crafted in a multitude of ways. Adaptations are not bland and unchallenging for audiences, as some detractors have described them, but the lifeblood of musical theatre past and present.

Published in Methuen Drama's Topics in Musical Theatre series, this book offers students a concise and readable study of a key form within musical theatre studies using relevant and contemporary case studies.