Double trouble ... Moonlight and Magnolias and Gone With the Wind. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/Kobal
All About My Mother, Elling, Dirty Dancing, Footloose ... You could be forgiven for mistaking London's theatre listings for the programme of a bizarre repertory cinema. But hang on, here's something a bit different: Moonlight and Magnolias is based not on a film, but the story behind a film. And not just any old movie, but producer David O Selznick's classic adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's doorstop novel Gone With the Wind.
Ron Hutchinson's entertaining play, which has opened at Kilburn's Tricycle, details the eleventh-hour rewrites for the movie, which stalls during production as Selznick tries to rescue it from becoming "the biggest white elephant in Hollywood's history". The mogul finds a new director, Victor Fleming, and hires ace script doctor Ben Hecht to save the screenplay. The trouble is, Hecht has never read Mitchell's book. So Selznick and Fleming are forced to act out each scene as Hecht hammers away at the typewriter. The trio bicker and brawl but deliver a faithful screenplay. ("Tomorrow is another day?" moans the exasperated Hecht. "Isn't it obvious that tomorrow is another day?")
The Tricycle, which houses a theatre and cinema under the same roof, has hit upon a bit of inspired programming. Those with several hours to spare might like to try their double bill: Gone With the Wind on the screen in the afternoon, and Moonlight and Magnolias on stage in the evening. Perhaps the Royal Court has missed a trick with its current production of Ionesco's Rhinoceros in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs. Why not put Orson's Shadow on upstairs? Austin Pendleton's play goes behind the scenes of Rhinoceros's British premiere at the Royal Court in 1960. It's quite a tale: critic Kenneth Tynan convinces a sceptical Orson Welles to direct the production, and love is in the air for the stars, Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright, as the cracks show in Olivier's marriage to Scarlett O'Hara - I mean Vivien Leigh.
I'd like to see more theatres orchestrating themed double bills. The Tricycle could try an Arthur Miller pairing: The Misfits and Finishing the Picture. Arthur Miller wrote his elegiac western The Misfits, directed by John Huston, for his then-wife, Marilyn Monroe. But the production was plagued by similar problems to Gone With the Wind, straying over-budget and behind schedule. Miller and Monroe had separated by the time it received its premiere. It's impossible not to read Miller's Finishing the Picture as a commentary on the film, as the play charts a seemingly doomed movie production - involving writer-husband and actress-wife - grinding to a halt in the heat of its desert location. It was Miller's last drama, just as The Misfits was Monroe's final completed film.
For further proof that a creative crisis can inspire extraordinary work, look no further than Fellini's arthouse classic 8½ - or the stage musical it inspired, Nine. I'd get a ticket for that double bill. In the meantime, I wonder if Trevor Nunn will see Moonlight and Magnolias. With six months to go until Nunn's Gone With the Wind opens on Drury Lane, it's an unsettling reminder of the perils of adapting such a hefty and controversial novel. Who knows - maybe in the future we'll have a play based on the behind-the-scenes intrigue of Nunn's production?
For now, we'll have to put up with another play based on a movie: Swimming With Sharks opens at the Vaudeville on Friday.
