Old Stories, Told Anew. Why are Adaptations So Popular?
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Stage adaptations are a tradition as old as theatre itself. The earliest surviving plays; Ancient Greek tragedies such as The Oresteia, Antigone and Medea, were usually dramatisations of oft-told myths. Many of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, for instance Hamlet, King Lear and Othello, were based on earlier works by other writers. As Piers Torday points out in his interview in this issue on his new version of A Christmas Carol, “when Dickens published ‘his little Christmas book’ in 1843 it took just six weeks for the first adaptation to reach the stage” [turn overleaf to page 12 for more]. And look at many of today’s biggest West End hits – The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, The Woman in Black, Les Misérables, Matilda and The Lion King, to name a few, are all based on pre-existing material.
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Am-DramAmateursNick Hern BooksTamara von WerthernTheatre
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