backstage.com: Turning a popular movie into a stage musical is nothing new, but “Silence! The Musical” certainly wins points for creative license. The show, currently an Off-Broadway hit in New York, takes on Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Oscar-winning thriller “The Silence of the Lambs” and delivers a hilarious, irreverent musical featuring singing, dancing lambs, and songs like “Are You About a Size 14?” Now, L.A. audiences will have a chance to get in on the laughs when “Silence!” begins performances at the Hayworth Theatre on Aug. 31.
9 comments:
It is fantastic that the musical of "Silence of the Lambs" is a comedy. A difficult movie to adapt to the stage, completely re-creating it makes for a new way for an audience to engage. There was an interesting article also posted about how the working class likes a comedy, an audience I can only imagine would be a target in Los Angeles and New York where the intellectual audience comes standard and the working class only comes when targeted. And who knows, after LA maybe back to NY for an even bigger run.
I think what is really exciting about this production is that once again adaptation is being taken to a new and exciting place!
We see constantly throughout all mediums of art different forms of adaptation. Theatre itself, though made up of new works, is largely made up of adaption. That concept of taking something that was and turning it into something new is so relevant not only to our craft but to the way our culture functions.
Seeing an extremely unique adaptation is broadening the horizons for all sorts of possibilities.
Although I have not seen the movie "Silence of the Lambs," I just love the concept of making a scary movie into a comedy. Knowing that this adaptation is out there makes me want to get over my fear of watching scary movies just so I can't watch "Silence of the Lambs" and then go see "Silence!" to compare the two. I'm also a fan of how the adaptation isn't the exact same thing as the movie. It's not a scary movie into a scary musical. It's different and exciting.
I am not one to support theatre deriving from a film. However, this case is different. Taking a scary movie and transforming it into a comedy on stage is an interesting concept. Whenever I watch scary movies, I always find myself subconsciously trying to make it into a comedy (otherwise, I get too scared.) Silence does not just take the events in "Silence of the Lambs" and put them onstage. Instead, they use creativity to pick out the "funny parts" of a scary movie and audiences have reacted positively. Although I have not seen Silence of the Lambs, nor Silence, I imagine that I would enjoy the play more so than the film. The idea of taking something familiar to an audience and putting it in a different light is a fantastic way to keep audience members interested and excited to be attending the theater.
Although I normally begrudge adaptation when it involves merely transporting what existed in one medium (film, TV, stage, book) and simply placing it somewhere else, like many Broadway musicals seem to be doing nowadays, it's shows like this that interest me. It's less of a direct adaptation and more of an original piece inspired by the cultural craze surrounding the film. It reminds me of The 39 Steps, which took Hitchcock's classic film noir and adapted it into a madcap farcical comedy. Both even have the actors playing multiple characters to hilarious effect. Even though Silence still might be using the film's popularity to generate buzz and ticket sales, I think the distinction is that Silence still contains significant artistic contribution and the generation of original material.
When I first saw that this was a movie adaptation, my first thought was "Oh no, not another one!" But this article has me intrigued. Having seen Silence of the Lambs (and being thoroughly frightened by it), I am now very interested to see how it could possibly be turned into a comedy. It's such a creative and out-there twist, that it sounds like it just might have been pulled off. I look forward to a chance to see "Silence!" in the near future.
Alex Grace
I would absolutely LOVE to see this new musical! Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorite movies ever and its was deffinetly very scary as a kid watching it so to see it as a comedy would be wonderful!
I've never seen Silence of the Lambs, but I'm glad that a very popular film is being allowed to be given new life though live theatre. The rights to the film are clearly not owned by the people putting on the show, and yet the true owners of the rights don't feel the need to send out and army of lawyers to stop the show. Often times in this day and age people spend a lot of time thinking about the legal repercussions of what they try to do. Although intellectual property rights are important, I would rather live in the world where we in not freely at least happily share the rights we hold so that others can create new worlds with what we started.
silence of the lambs is an undeniably creepy movie and seeing advertisements and trailers for it in new york made me curious as to what this adaptation (if it really should be called such) entailed. Silence the musical started out as a fringe show just like the famous pigpen, its great to see whats possible for shows that do well at fringe.
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