Well, it was the 1980s: Rosanna Arquette and Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan. Photograph: The Kobal Collection
Memo to the producers who are bringing Desperately Seeking Susan to the West End: Watch out! On the one side of you is a rock-throwing horde of raised-nose elitists who hate musicals based on films. And on the other side are the venom-spewing fun-haters who deride jukebox musicals (that is to say, musicals made up of pre-existing pop hits). By bringing a 1985 movie to the stage with songs by Blondie, you're about to incur the wrath of both of these angry mobs who can't stand it when the commercial theatre puts on theatre that is, well, commercial.
Most of these folks, of course, hate musicals, full stop - so you needn't worry about them affecting you commercially. But, artistically, do these carpers even have a point?
In a word, no. In two words, no way. In eight words, they don't have a leg to stand on. Eight years after Mamma Mia! and six years after The Producers, isn't it time to put this debate to rest?
I am, at a visceral level, somewhat sympathetic to the criticism that jukebox musicals are creatively lazy. But rationally, I have to admit that I am simply being prejudiced. If the problem with jukebox musicals is that they have silly, loose plots strung together by a bunch of good songs, well, you'd basically have to hate all old, pre-Show Boat musicals. I cannot do that.
The idea that basing stage shows on films is somehow artistically suspect, however, leaves me absolutely cold. No one minds when a musical is based on a novel like Les Miserables, short stories like South Pacific (source: James A Michener's Pulitzer-winning Tales of the South Pacific), poems like Cats, or an older play like Cabaret (souce: John Van Druten's I Am a Camera). It's only musicals based on movies that seem to raise people's hackles, even though film has been validated as a legitimate art form for, oh, a century or so.
As Don DeLillo - and you can trust him, because he's a novelist - has written, "[F]ilm is our second self, a major narrative force in the culture, an aspect of consciousness connected at some level to sleep and dreams, as the novel is the long hard slog of waking life. When reality elevates itself to spectacular levels, people tend to say, 'It was like a movie.'" So what better source material is there for the spectacle of musical theatre than film?
The problem isn't with films being adapted for the stage. The problem is with films being adapted badly to the stage. Certainly, productions like A Matter of Life and Death or Festen have shown that the transformation can be accomplished intelligently in "straight" theatre. (I, for one, am quite intrigued to see the stage adaptation of Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother at the Old Vic in the autumn, and Coventry's Belgrade theatre's decision to mount stage versions of Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage and Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire sounds promising.) If the prejudice against adapting films into stage drama is dying, why does it linger on with musicals after The Lion King, Billy Elliot, Spamalot and Dirty Dancing? (Just kidding about Dirty Dancing.)
So, yes, I'm perfectly willing (theoretically) to get into the groove of a Desperately Seeking Susan musical ... I can think of other films I'd personally rather see turned into musicals, of course. Like, say, that other Madonna classic: Dick Tracy. Or what about - and I'm not entirely sure why this is coming to mind - The 40-Year-Old Virgin. What films would you like to see turned into singing and dancing extravaganzas?
