I love television and musical theatre with equal passion, but for very different reasons. I even got degrees in both of these things. While my classmates in my theatre MA program were already deeply knowledgeable about theatrical canon and history from their undergrad classes, I was comparing Medea to Karen Walker and using Seinfeld and Green Acres to talk about Ionesco’s absurdist classic The Bald Soprano.
I know. Huge nerd.
Just recently, sitcom legend and all around style icon Fran Drescher announced that a Broadway musical adaptation of her iconic 90s sitcom The Nanny is in development.
Actual footage of me when I heard the news:
The Nanny’s colorful and clashing characters are perfect for the stage: over the top in the most theatrical ways, idiosyncratic and with real humanity juxtaposing hilarious exaggeration (hi, Sylvia Fine). I don’t know about you, but I know I need Niles and C.C. to insult each other through an old-school patter song.
Maxwell Sheffield’s job as a Broadway producer allowed for many musical moments on the TV show (Yetta’s Letters should 100% actually exist) and would set the stage for some super interesting meta moments in a real Broadway musical.
But most importantly, the characters genuinely care about one another and have lots of love to share. It’s the perfect piece of theatre to make us laugh and fill us with the warm glow of nostalgia.
We stan a flashy girl from Flushing just trying to get ahead in the world.
(Also, I’m available to audition for the role of Valerie Toriello at Fran’s convenience).
Film adaptations on Broadway are abundant and almost overstaying their welcome. They tend to stay close to the film’s storyline and are unable to expand the world significantly. Television source material, however, is a vast and open landscape with hundreds of hours of story and character development already completed. This allows musical producers to develop original stories using characters we already deeply know and love from spending countless binge-able hours with them.
Fresh off this amazing Nanny news, lets look at some of the best musicals adapted from television series.
The Addams Family, A New Musical Comedy
Technically based on the original Charles Addams cartoons, The Addams Family has enough familiar flare to draw a crowd and a modernized storyline to keep us interested. (The rewritten touring version is far superior to the original Broadway). With a huge heart and a chorus of dancing dead ancestors, The Addams Family was the most produced high school musical in the 2018-2019 school year, reigniting the franchise’s popularity with young audiences. The musical emphasizes themes present since Addams’s initial drawings – normal is an illusion, there is light and dark within everything, and the importance of being true to yourself.
Gilligan’s Island The Musical
Sherwood Schwartz, creator of the original TV series about seven shipwrecked castaways, wrote the script for the musical, so as far as I’m concerned it’s canon. Premiering back in 1994, Schwartz claimed that this was the first musical adaptation of a television property. The show explores the characters’ interpersonal issues in a way that the TV series veered away from after the first season. After all, Schwartz envisioned the series as a “social microcosm,” aiming to explore how people from vastly different places and experiences live together and help each other survive. The S.S. Minnow’s shipwreck and the castaways’ struggles to adapt are all explored with the super high camp we expect and just enough emotional investment to enhance the characters while staying true to the sitcom.
Also it’s a double love story.
Also there’s an alien.
The Honeymooners
A splashy professional production premiered at Papermill Playhouse a few years ago, echoing themes of the CBS sitcom without duplicating them. Musical theatre allows down-on-their-luck Ralph and Ed’s big dreams to come to life on stage in an immersive way that television did not – with fantastic costumes and sets and large-scale production numbers. A show about hard-working dreamers and their level-headed wives is the perfect way to connect to an audience, to entertain and inspire.
Spongebob Squarepants
A non-literal interpretation of the classic Nickelodeon cartoon won over skeptics and thrilled fans. The score is filled with contemporary songs by Sara Bareilles, Lady Antebellum, and Panic! At The Disco, among others, and brought a freshness to Broadway that people weren’t quite expecting. The inherent theatricality of the cartoon made Spongebob the perfect candidate for the stage, where it had the opportunity to connect with audiences more intimately. Filled with meta-theatrical jokes, sight gags, and wry commentary, the musical has something for audience members of all ages.
The Beverly Hillbillies
I so wish I had seen this one. The Clampetts oil strike and big move to Beverly Hills is theatrical enough as it is, so adding music and choreography seems like the perfect move. I’m a huge fan of 1960s camp television, so I’m down with any of it appearing on stage, but there’s something so wholesome and heartwarming about seeing the family’s wide-eyed wonder and confusion about their new home in person that makes putting this particular property on stage a solid decision.
I hope Aunt Pearl and Jethrine are in it.
Honorable Mentions: Little House on the Prairie, Family Ties, and Hazel.
I’ve only included serious attempts at adaptation, not parodies and riffs of TV series or stage shows that borrow from scripts to form their plots. Hilarious musical parodies of The Office, The Golden Girls, The Brady Bunch, 90210 and more are packing houses, playing on nostalgia in a more wry manner than the shows above.
What other television series would make successful stage adaptations?
Unfortunately it looks like there’s still no hope for Megan Mullally’s Karen: The Musical.
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