Bare
Like The Last Five Years, Bare never made it to Broadway proper, but it has developed a cult following due to its phenomenal cast album and a lot of YouTube bootlegs. Following a 2000 Los Angeles debut and a 2004 run Off-Broadway, it has been revived consistently around the world, particularly picking up speed in – no pun intended – the last five years. Bare is set in a Catholic boarding school attended by Peter and Jason, two well-liked boys who are best friends, roommates, and, secretly, in love. The musical opens with their established relationship and follows what happens when everything falls to pieces during their senior year. It’s slightly outdated in today’s post-Glee world, stuffing every teen issue you can think of into two acts, but the story is genuinely heartbreaking and the music is phenomenal and very raw.
Bare was redeveloped in 2012, into a book musical (spoken dialogue interspersed with songs) with significant plot changes, but the original sung-through version (known as Bare: A Pop Opera) has remained more popular, because frankly, it’s better. It wouldn’t take much to shift the heavy-handed attitude into something realistic for a 2015 movie, or there’s also the option of setting the movie in the time of its original writing, the late ’90s. With the right casting and chemistry for Peter and Jason, it’s an opportunity to showcase some incredible young talent, and it also features a good handful of interesting female roles. If a studio played their cards right, this could turn into a whole The Fault In Our Stars situation and become Tumblr’s most beloved sad romance of the year.
In The Heights
New York and Broadway have always gone hand in hand. So many shows are inspired by life in the city that will one day host them – from West Side Story to Rent, to The Last Five Years itself. In The Heights joins these ranks as a worthy contender – the “heights” in question are Washington Heights, home to a large Latin American population and the setting of this unique New York story. In The Heights premiered Off-Broadway in 2007 and moved to Broadway in 2008, but the show’s composer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, had been working on it since 1999 while still in college. Miranda also joined the original cast as the show’s lead character and narrator, Usnavi, the owner of a bodega who dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic where he was born.
The plot doesn’t focus on a major event, it’s more understated than that. It’s a snapshot of people’s lives, of their culture, their dreams, and of the wins and losses that life hands to the Washington Heights neighborhood, or barrio, over a three-day period. We get to know a whole host of local immigrant families – the majority of Heights characters are Hispanic, and realistically slip in and out of Spanish in both dialogue and song, all looked over by the neighborhood matriarch, Abuela Claudia. The score is fast-paced, containing strong elements of rap and salsa – it’s a truly modern take on musical theater. For a long time, it’s been a stuffy and safe genre, and In The Heights is one of the shows that has really shaken things up in recent years, and pushed boundaries. A movie of In The Heights would not only be one of the most diverse and dynamic possible options, it would also be the most socially relevant.
La Cage Aux Folles
La Cage Aux Folles was originally written as a French non-musical play in 1973, and the play itself has been made into films both in French, and in English, as The Birdcage. Yeah, this is that story, but trust us, no matter how wonderful Nathan Lane and the late, great Robin Williams are in the 1996 comedy, the Broadway adaptation is better. La Cage Aux Folles, the musical, takes place in Saint-Tropez rather than Miami, but the basics are the same – Georges, a nightclub owner and Albin, his partner and the club’s leading drag performer, are faced with a few dilemmas when Georges’s son brings his fiancee, and her extremely conservative parents, home to meet the family.
The score, by veteran Broadway composer Jerry Herman, features some matchless numbers, including the empowering and defiant “I Am What I Am,” and the scenes range from slapstick hilarity to (temporary) devastation. Any movie adaptation of La Cage would need to be larger-than-life, glitzy, fun and heartwarming. Like Bare, this is a story about queer issues and tolerance, but you’d leave the cinema after this one feeling like you’ve been given a big hug, rather than a knife to the gut. By the way, John Barrowman has done the role of Albin in The West End, and, because he doesn’t age, he’d certainly still be up to scratch for a movie version.
Spring Awakening
Yes, it’s another show about Sad Teen Issues, but this one’s a period drama! Spring Awakening is a dark production dealing with issues including puberty, sexuality, abuse, abortion and mental health in a small town in 19th century Germany. The lead roles of Wendla and Melchior were originated by Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff in 2006, with Pitch Perfect’s Skylar Astin also part of the original cast.
Spring Awakening is a graphic and potentially triggering exploration of what happens when young adults are treated like children and left in the dark about what is happening in their minds and bodies – this kind of repression and naivety was likely quite common for the time, and in this circumstance, it has tragic results. An adaptation of this musical would have the freedom to get rough and heavy, and it shouldn’t shy away from that – this film should horrify people.
One of this musical’s most unusual aspects is the juxtaposition of its historical setting and its modern rock score. The songs are contemporary and quite fantastic, and this contrast of eras generally influences other aspects of the show, such as costuming, choreography and language. This could be an opportunity for a director, cinematographer or designer to do something really creative and original. A good Spring Awakening movie would be Oscar bait for sure.
The Book of Mormon
This is the big one. The blockbuster, the moneymaker, the smash hit of the season. All that jazz. The Book of Mormon has been a huge hit since its premiere in 2011 – it won nine Tony Awards, it was the fastest selling Broadway cast album in iTunes history, and it’s still impossible to get discount tickets to. It’s become an instant Broadway classic and a household name, and it’s a likely candidate for a film adaptation.
In case you live under a rock, The Book of Mormon is a satirical comedy about two young Mormon missionaries – golden boy Elder Price and hopeless case Elder Cunningham – who get sent to war-torn, AIDS-ridden Uganda on their mission and attempt to convert the African community that they meet. Things go about as well as you would expect. This show is offensive, irreverent, sweet, uplifting, very very clever and very very funny. It’s both utterly tongue-in-cheek and weirdly genuine, and the Mormon church itself has lodged no complaints about the musical, a fact that shocked the media but apparently did not surprise the show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
Making The Book of Mormon into a movie might be a little more sensitive than staging the musical, given the trend of injecting a bit more realism into film adaptations, but we’d suggest they can that concept and stick to all-out farce. Given that Stone and Parker are best known for creating South Park, we don’t imagine this would be a problem for them. The pair have previously announced that they are working on turning the book into a screenplay, but there’s no recent news, so who knows if a movie is legitimately in the pipeline? We hope it is.
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