Some say that theater is dead, and that’s
probably because most playhouses the world
over are closed at the moment owing to a worldwide
pandemic. And yet the musical lives on…
on Disney plus -- as the nation has been rapt
with a filmed version of the Broadway smash
hit, Hamilton
But this show wouldn’t have even been a
twinkle in Broadway’s eyes if it weren’t
for the fact that composer/lyricist/human
embodiment of theater kid energy Lin-Manuel
Miranda hadn’t stumbled upon a copy of the
biography he used as the basis for the show--Ron
Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton, the musical, is not based on the
life of this guy, it is based on this book.
Though it seems an unlikely topic for a musical,
Miranda had this to say about the process
of adapting it in a conversation with legendary
broadway composer Stephen Sondheim:
“Well, that leads me to a really good bit
of advice you gave me early when I was writing
"Hamilton." I was drowning in research. And
what you told me was, "Just write the parts
you think are a musical." And that forms its
own spine.”
And it had us come to the realization that
a lot of the bread and butter of musical theater
is built off of books!
And so, like every television program that
starts looking for new ideas, it has finally
come to this: The It’s Lit! Musical episode
Why do people like Musicals?
At its best, a musical uses all its mediums
to maximum effect - writing, dialogue, singing,
dancing, lighting, and so on. It knows when
to use a song, and when to pull back. It knows
when to go ham on the acting, and when to
not do that.
But since you have to be a master of so many
schools, it could be argued that’s why musicals
are so difficult to pull off, and are so often
cheesy and hamfisted rather than packing the
emotional punch they’re going for. You could
argue that it hits you in the fee fees in
a more quick and potent way, so a good book
adaptation will distill the novel’s emotional
core, and turn it… into song!
A successful musical will find the emotional
core of the story, and use music to express
that emotional core. Kidnapping a young soprano
through the means of deception and hypnotizing--MAKE
IT A ROMANTIC SONG.
According to New Yorker staff writer Adam
Gopnik on “Les Misérables”: “...the
real absence from novel to musical is rooted
in the DNA of the musical theatre, which welcomes
big emotions but not always to complicated
or ambivalent ones.”
While the rent-bemoaning, gravity defying
musicals of today seem like the product of
a relatively young artform, musical theater
comes from a long tradition of storytelling
that has its roots in opera (where plot and
dialogue are moved primarily through sung
music) and operetta (more dialogue driven
and lighter/usually comedic in tone)
But even some of the most popular operas were
adapted from books, such as Puccini’s La
Bohème and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
Not to mention the scores of opera based on
Shakespearean works, like Verdi’s Otello,
Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet… you get the
idea.
Flash forward to the 1920s, when the vaudeville,
vignette-style of musical theatre was in vogue
and the songs rarely moved the plot forward
and were more showcases for dancing/singing. 
In comes Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein
II’s 1927 musical, Showboat, based on Edna
Ferber’s 1926 novel of the same title. Record
fast turnover there.
Here, songs like “Ol’ Man River” and
“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”, drove
the story forward, discussing complex themes
of tragic love and racial prejudice, and without
the promise of just being popcorn entertainment.
From there, the “book musical”--ie, a
musical play where songs and dancing are integrated
fully into a story with emotional and dramatic
goals--exploded into popularity.
And it is from this era that we get many classics
of the genre adapted from books
However it’s starting in the 1980s, we really
start seeing shows veer into THING YOU’VE
HEARD OF: THE MUSICAL! Territory, where musicals
are not just based on books, but that adaptation
is a selling bad, musicals based on books
continue to be big business -- Even Love Never
Dies, the famous disaster sequel to Phantom
of the Opera is based on a book. Oh yeah.
It’s called The Phantom of Manhattan and
it was written by acclaimed mystery writer
Frederick Forsythe.
Also, shout out to Lestat the Musical, based
on Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and yes
I paid to see. Twice. Best $20 I ever spent.
So despite the incredible popularity of musicals
based on books, it must needs be remarked
that when we talk about musical theater and
its relationship to books, there is something
of a lingering… snobbery.
In his 1936 essay ‘The work of art in the
age of mechanical reproduction’, Walter
Benjamin claimed that every original work
of art has an aura of authenticity that is
gradually stripped away by the processes of
copying and reproduction.
Film scholar and… my advanced project professor
at NYU Robert Stam has argued, literature
will always have "axiomatic superiority" over
other forms of adaptation because of its seniority
as an art form. This hierarchy also has something
to do with what he calls "iconophobia" (the
suspicion of the visual) and the concomitant
"logophilia" (the love of the word as sacred).
From this perspective, adaptations are, by
definition, "belated, middlebrow, or culturally
inferior.”
However, other scholars have argued that there
is a middle ground or a place for adaptation
in other forms of media. In her essay “On
the Art of Adaptation”, professor and literary
theorist Linda Hutcheon, says:
“While no medium is inherently good at doing
one thing and not another, each medium (like
each genre) has different means of expression
and so can aim at certain things better than
others. [...] if the artist has a paintbrush,
his or her vision of the same landscape will
emerge as masses instead. A poet, by the same
analogy, will be attracted to representing
different aspects of a story than the creator
of a musical spectacular”
If we did an in-depth analysis of this topic
with a lot of different musicals, this episode
would be as long as, well, Les Miz --but this
is PBS, it’s a nonprofit we don’t have
that kind of budget
So let’s look at some musical adaptations
that turned into big hits - what did they
change, and what did they keep?
Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked makes
for a great example of how adaptation can
completely change the tone of the original
source material while still retaining the
plot elements that made it compelling. Based
on L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz books, Wicked
is told from the point-of-view of the Wicked
Witch of the West, or as she is referred to
in his novel, Elphaba Thropp. While the musical
is a bubbly, high-energy pop pastiche about
her backstory, the novel is way more nihilistic,
detached, and much more concerned with the
racial subtext of Oz and Elphaba’s fight
against injustice.
Stephen Schwartz’s musical adaptation takes
that and completely changes the tone - recasting
Elphaba and Galinda, the Good Witch of the
North, as two young women exploring how their
friendship changes as they grow up together.
Wicked smartly understood that while the source
material was compelling, what people want
in a musical is slightly queer coded femme
stories between a dark haired woman and a
blonde with songs about being a magical #girlboss.
Which is to say that it is basically a Disney
musical complete with an “I Want Song”
a “Power Ballad,” tacked on unnecessary
hetero love story, animal fun times and a
happy ending! That was not there in the novel.
But where Wicked seems like an obvious pick
for a musical adaptation, what could seem
less obvious than a musical based on the life
of the United States’ first treasury secretary,
Alexander Hamilton?
Well if the musical feels extremely biased
towards Hamilton, a lot of that is because
Ron Chernow, who wrote the biography on which
the musical is based, is extremely biased
towards Aelxander Hamilton. 
So while the show is about this one guy’s
life as written by Chernow, it’s expands
on that by way of the theme “who lives who
dies who tells your story” - knowing and
accepting that you can’t control how people
will frame your place in history after you’re
gone
Miranda’s major change is focusing on the
exploration of legacy as an emotional experience
rather than an intellectual/academic one 
Miranda worked closely with Chernow, to bring
in the multi-racial casting as a specific
feature of the theatrical production--Miranda
says his intent was to tell a story "about
America then, told by America now" -- using
different styles of music and dance, specifically
hip hop, in a way that you can’t do with
a book.
According to Miranda - “we want to eliminate
any distance — our story should look the
way our country looks. Then we found the best
people to embody these parts. I think it’s
a very powerful statement without having to
be a statement.”
But if we’re going by sheer ambition vs
execution, perhaps the biggest success story
is Boublil and Schonberg’s 1985 musical,
Les Misérables. Or as we call it in the theater
kid community - Les Miz
According to the Oxford Handbook of the British
Musical, a thing that exists: “The novel’s
spiritual and sentimental tones necessarily
become simpler and more forceful in a sung-through
musical that is played out on a theatrical
stage. The musical echoes Hugo but understands
that his narrative range and depth could not
be merely recited if it were to succeed as
a modern opera…
Based on Victor Hugo’s book of the same
name which is approximately  60000 pages
long - how does one distill the emotional
core of this book, and render it in song?
1. The revolutionary subplot
2. Jean Valjean’s personal journey
3. Young Love™
What is telling is what is cut out - the book
is very concerned with French history, the
musical, less so. There is a huge chunk in
the second half of the novel that goes back
to the battle of Waterloo, explains that history
for a few hundred pages
In the musical, it gets a passing mention
- Thenardier “picking through the pockets
of the English dead” - but that’s not
the focus. The show keys in on the big emotions,
both macro--the political movement embodied
with songs like “do you hear the people
sing”-- and the micro, the personal emotional
journeys of the characters
To again cite that Oxford musical handbook:
“Whether personal taste accommodates the
megamusical genre or not, the fact remains
that Les Misérables has become the foremost
example of this musical form by successfully
intensifying the original novel’s melodrama.”
 
And of course it would not be an episode I
co-wrote without a mention of our sadboi,
our favorite trashcan, the phantom of the
opera.
Andrew Lloyd Webber claims that a chance finding
of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel was the thing
that inspired what would become the most successful
broadway musical in history
This novel has everything -- kidnapping, extortion,
a fallen chandelier, a torture chamber in
the guest bedroom
The musical cuts that out.
But although he saw incredible potential there,
since the novel was originally serialized,
it was also kind of all over the place.
Said Lloyd Webber, “The Gaston Leroux [novel]
is a very confused confection – sometimes
a faux history story, then sporting a touch
of George du Maurier’s novel, Trilby, next
a horror story, then it’s French detective
time, now and then it’s spiced with Beauty
and the Beast with a dash of satanic Paganini.”
Also, the Phantom’s name has GOT to go--in
the very first treatment Lloyd Webber wrote
for the musical, he notes “also in the novel
he’s called Erik! no way — “Erik!”
The Musical, bad title”
So what does Lord Andy horn in on in this
somewhat tonally inconsistent novel with an
underwhelming name for the lead? Simple - it’s
a tragic romance about unrequited love 
The novel has the seeds of this story of unrequited
love among many other things, but Lloyd Webber
decided that should be the primary focus
So the musical makes the Phantom, in Lord
Andy’s words “no monster” but “a handsome
hunk.” Michael Crawford, sex adonis.  he
has this hypnotic power and christine is drawn
to his musical genius
Lloyd Webber also took elements that happened
offscreen or were teased in the novel, and
turned it up to 11 for maximum musical melodrama
Again, Lord Andy: “Here was the plot I could
fashion into the high romance I had been longing
to write. [...]. The Phantom has composed
his own passionate opera for Christine to
perform. Come its performance, the Phantom
acts out his wildest fantasy by taking the
lead opposite her himself. Christine publicly
shames him by unmasking him in front of the
entire opera house.[..]And when did Christine
give the Phantom back the ring? It’s not
in Leroux’s novel.”
So while Erik (the Phantom) was always a tragic/sympathetic
character, the major change here is making
him relatable. Arguably the audience is meant
to relate more to the phantom than to anyone
else in the show.
In revisiting his opinion of Les Misérables
25-years after the show opened , The Guardian
theatre critic Michael Billington, who originally
trashed the show, had this to say in retrospect:
What I find intriguing is that we think we
live in a very cool, smart, cynical age. Yet,
when the chips are down, what we really crave
is a contest of good and evil, and lashings
of spectacle.”
It is easy to be down on a musical adaption
of a book, just in the same way it’s easy
to be down on a film adaptation. But literary
and media studies have been making a case
for the power and art form of musical adaptation
for years.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times theatre
critic Brooks Atkison put it: ”As an art
form, the musical stage is entitled to serious
consideration.[...] By the richness of its
medium, which blends music, dance,verse, costume,
scenery and orchestra, the musical drama makes
complete use of the theater. It is the one
element left in a form of literature that
was all poetry originally.”
So while it is sad that broadway has been dark for the longest time in its history
If the success of Hamilton on Disney tells us anything,
The love is still there.
and the Lightning Thief?
Good and is still there.
