There’s just something about the aesthetics and melodrama of the Gothic that lends itself so well to the stage. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that more than a few classic Gothic novels have been adapted into modern pieces of musical theater—and often quite successfully! Below are some well-known and lesser known examples of Gothic adaptations that have been performed under the bright lights of Broadway:
The Phantom of the Opera
As the longest-running Broadway show in history, you’ve almost certainly heard of this one. Based on the 1910 French novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, the musical adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera opened in London’s West End in 1986 and has been continuously running on Broadway since 1988. The musical’s iconic score was created by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Charles Hart. Webber’s then-wife, Sarah Brightman, originated the role of Christine Daae, and Michael Crawford was the first to play the Phantom. This classic tale of an opera ingénue and her murderous masked mentor has kept audiences coming back to Broadway for over three decades. But Webber was far from the first to adapt Leroux’s novel. In fact, Webber was actually inspired by an earlier musical adaptation from 1976 with book and lyrics by British playwright Ken Hill. There is also, of course, the silent horror film starring Lon Chaney as the Phantom, produced by Universal Studios in 1925. But given that the original novel is set within an opera house—and multiple key plot events occur during musical performances—musical theater really does seem to be the ideal medium for this story.
The Woman in White
So, most of you have probably heard of Phantom, but did you know that’s not the only Gothic musical Andrew Lloyd Webber has worked on? The Woman in White is an 1859 novel by Wilkie Collins, which I recently touched on in my post on asylums as a Gothic setting. Wilke Collins himself adapted his novel for the stage in 1871, and it received the silent film treatment multiple times throughout the 1910s and ’20s. But Webber was the first to see some musical potential in the story. In contrast to Phantom, however, The Woman in White was one of Webber’s shortest-running shows; it opened in the West End in 2004, where it ran for a year and a half, and then only made it three months on Broadway in 2005. Webber brought Michael Crawford in once more—this time as the villain Count Fosco (though he remained in the role only briefly), and Maria Friedman starred as Marian Halcombe. The show was briefly revived in London again in 2017. Rather than a straight adaptation of the novel, Webber’s musical blends the plot of Collins’s book with elements of Charles Dickens’s 1866 short story “The Signal-Man.” As intriguing as that unexpected combination sounds, the musical received mixed reviews in both London and New York.
Jane Eyre
But Andrew Lloyd Webber isn’t the only composer to take inspiration from the Gothic. A Jane Eyre musical, adapted from Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, was created in 1995 by composer-lyricist Paul Gordon, with book by John Caird. The show was workshopped in Wichita, Kansas, and was performed in Toronto and San Diego before making it onto Broadway in 2000, where it ran for seven months. Marla Schaffe won several awards for her performance of the title character Jane Eyre on Broadway, and the production was nominated for five Tony Awards. The show was revived in 2018 in Cleveland. The musical is a fairly faithful adaptation of Brontë’s novel with a few creative liberties and elisions and a fitting number of dramatic love songs between Jane and Mr. Rochester.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
I’ll end with another cornerstone of modern musical theater—Sweeney Todd. Though the musical is quite popular, its origins are a bit less widely known than the examples above, especially since the adaptation came with a title change: The story originally comes from an anonymously published penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls, that was serialized in British magazines in weekly installments from 1846 to 1847. An entertainingly gruesome and dramatic tale, The String of Pearls was adapted for the stage many times. But it was Christopher Bond’s 1973 stage version (notable for introducing the sympathetic backstory for the murderous barber, Sweeny Todd) that inspired Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The show opened on Broadway in 1979, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical that year, and in the West End in 1980, where it won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Broadway veteran Angela Lansbury received particular praise for originating the role of Mrs. Lovett, the meat shop proprietress who bakes Todd’s victims into pies. While the original penny dreadful placed more of a focus on the story’s victims—especially the young sailor, Mark, who is forced to work the ovens, and his lover, Johanna, who disguises herself as a boy to come looking for him—the musical really allows the villains to shine. The show was revived on Broadway in 1989 and 2005, and revived Off-Broadway in 2017. In 2007, Tim Burton adapted Sondheim’s musical into a film starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.
I’ve only managed to see Phantom on Broadway and Sweeney Todd Off-Broadway, but those two at least are phenomenal shows! Have you seen any of these productions? What other Gothic novels would you want to see adapted for musical theater? Let me know in the comments!