When the Stage Harnesses the Power of the Movies

The other camp faces bigger hurdles. You might not have even heard of the original, and so the productions can’t rely upon the audience’s memories. These shows also take for granted that fans who do know the underlying story are ready to encounter it in a new way. “The Notebook,” based on a weepie classic that fans rewatch endlessly, opted to reimagine its material, leaving the basic plot and emotional core intact while significantly mixing up how it’s presented. The result works powerfully, even if you’ve never seen the movie; if you have, it’s like a fresh lens, a cover of a favorite song that works all on its own.

In a time when theater, always precarious, feels as if it’s teetering on the brink, and Hollywood is barely hanging on, it’s fascinating to see theater-makers turning toward less obviously commercial movie properties for new works. For the work to actually succeed, there needs to be a willingness to experiment with the underlying property.

What’s striking to me, watching the second category of shows as a film critic, is the kind of fresh insight they bring to the underlying material. After all, theater presents restrictions to artists that filmmakers don’t encounter — there’s no editing, no multiple takes, no reliance on green screens, no “fixing it in post.” And the way plots and characters operate in many films aims for a realism that’s almost inherently absent on the stage. Theater requires the audience to engage in a much higher level of suspension of disbelief, and so the writing changes, forced into finding a truly fresh angle on the original. For film fans weary of reboots that barely bother to reimagine their source material in interesting ways, theatrical adaptations feel like a shot in the arm.

There are more to come. Productions of “Death Becomes Her” (based on Robert Zemeckis’s 1992 satirical black comedy) and “Good Night, and Good Luck” (based on the 2005 drama directed by George Clooney, who will star in the Broadway show) have been announced in recent weeks. And while Disney has been in the theater game for a long time, producing shows at the New Amsterdam Theater, other film companies are eyeing the stage too. In 2023, the indie darling movie production company A24 bought the Cherry Lane Theater, a small but venerable venue in Greenwich Village. Netflix, meanwhile, is a co-producer on “Patriots,” which nabbed a Tony nomination for its star, Michael Stuhlbarg.

Nobody quite knows what the future holds for the entertainment industry, and theater is, if anything, an even riskier business than movies. But it’s exciting to see the age-old relationship between the cinema and the stage take on a new tenor — and perhaps it can help reinvigorate both arts.