The Independent's Tom Sutcliffe wrote an excellent article about why it's difficult to turn a good novel into a stage play. He uses the new production of Sebastian Faulkes' "Birdsong" as an example:
"...the odd truth is that the theatre can take qualities which are a virtue on the page and convert them into a vice. Take narrative structure, for example, which may find itself awkwardly exposed on stage. A novel – particularly a novel of literary ambition like Birdsong – may well be strengthened by a plot that draws on coincidence and melodramatic turns of fate. For one thing it can clothe that armature so skilfully that you forget that it's there at all. The duration of the novel and its density of texture mask the scaffolding that's holding it up.
Thomas Hardy, for example, used plots of almost embarrassing crudity, if boiled down to their skeleton. And yet you barely notice that in the books, because the bare bones are in their proper place – decently interred. On stage the bones have to be present and correct, or the loyalists moan, but there's little room left for what clothes them."
That was certainly the case with the West End stage production of "Gone With the Wind," which I had the pleasure of seeing. It wasn't a pleasure in the way they intended, but watching the poor actors race through their lines because the play was running an hour long, and seeing the impoverished special effects simulate what would have been called the scorching of Atlanta did have perverse entertainment value.
The moral may be: if you're going to adapt a novel for the stage, start with a bad one.
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