At the beginning of February, something that I have been dreading for years finally happened. It was announced that “La La Land” is being adapted for the Broadway stage. “La La Land” is one of the most critically acclaimed and publicly beloved movie musicals ever, even after the embarrassing mix-up during the 2017 Academy Awards.
I am among many who consider “La La Land” a favorite. It is not the best film ever made, but it embeds itself in a particular time and place of my life and has themes I still carry with me.
Not only do I love this movie, but I also love theatre. I have been involved in theatre for over half of my life, and it is one of my primary passions. With my love for both “La La Land” and the stage art form, you would think that I would be ecstatic about the adaptation. Instead, I’m frustrated.
“La La Land” is an homage to the art of film. The character of Mia (Emma Stone) is an actress whose passion for acting stemmed from watching old films with her aunt. Mia and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) stroll through film sets reminiscent of The Golden Age of Hollywood, and Mia tells stories of reenacting old movies like “Casablanca” in her living room. But it isn’t just the plot that is reminiscent of an older film era. The cinematography and scene design is filled with mid-twentieth-century nostalgia reinforcing the movie as an ode to previous decades of Hollywood. “La La Land” was designed for the medium of film in a way that is integral to the story. The show’s scenic design on a stage may be breathtaking, but it will never be able to do what the medium of the film did with the concept. To maintain the same heartbeat that “La La Land” has, the Broadway adaptation would need to become a love letter to the stage. This makes the setting of Los Angeles (La La Land) completely pointless, as well as whole aspects of the plot.
Music and acting in film and theatre are two very different things. Jazz, historically speaking, thrives in small spaces. Jazz was created in tiny clubs in Harlem and New Orleans. Film can capture the small space of jazz in a way that a massive stage simply can’t. Attempting to take the kind of jazz that Sebastian loves to a Broadway stage would lose the closeness that film gives us. The more musical theatre-styled songs were even written differently than they would be for a stage production. They were not written to be big or belty like modern musical theatre. They were written for voices like Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling – beautiful in a small and unpresuming kind of way. Songs like “City of Stars” and “Audition (Fools Who Dream)” are going to have to change drastically to transfer to the stage. Not to mention that the stage’s distance will lose the spark that the film catches in the actors.
The bigger issue is this: the world is full of adaptations. Especially in the Broadway world. Adaptation success stories like “Mean Girls,” “Legally Blonde” and “Waitress” have created an increased amount of adaptation attempts in the past five years. “The Princess Bride” was recently announced, as well as a musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” coming in 2024.
My main question is, why? Mostly, these adaptations don’t do anything to make the story more impactful. They might create some catchy songs with familiar characters, but mainly they just create another piece of media without writing another story. They make money off the fanbase that they didn’t work to create.
I think that adaptations can be beneficial in certain circumstances. Sometimes adapting something from the stage to film makes a story more accessible for audiences with less financial capital.
Book-to-film adaptations (when done well) can make it more accessible for those who struggle with reading whole novels but still appreciate a story. Broadway makes these stories less accessible due to ticket costs and specific location. So, if they take adaptations, they must offer something deepening the previously established story. I don’t see how a Broadway version of “La La Land” could do this beyond what the film already did.
This is just one of the countless adaptations that are unnecessary and prioritize profit over art. Disney is incredibly guilty of this with their live-action remakes. Instead of recognizing animation as a distinct art form that does something for the story being told, they need to cram it into another form that will make them more money. But when a piece of art is created, it is typically made with a certain medium in mind. This should be something that we praise instead of trying to force stories into our preferred mediums.
It may be easier to adapt a story than to create one from scratch, but easier does not make it better. Sometimes the best option is to leave a story in the form it was designed to be in. Let’s leave “La La Land” in the world of Hollywood and consider doing the same for other stories as well.