“ANNE HATHAWAY IS ON BROADWAY”: The Overlap of Stage and Screen

Is Anne Hathaway, the Oscar-winning star of such beloved films as The Devil Wears Prada, really appearing in a current Broadway show? Well, not exactly. But this is the eye-catching headline on the back cover of a recent Playbill. It’s a clever ad campaign for a Broadway pop musical, & Juliet, in which Shakespeare’s much-neglected wife—also named Anne Hathaway—plays a featured role. The joke works because most theatregoers are also movie enthusiasts. And there’s frequent overlap between the two industries, as screen stars try on major Broadway roles, and the stage’s most beloved performers hope to immortalize their talents on film.

 Once upon a time, hit Broadway shows quickly wended their way to Hollywood. There they became even bigger hits because—by transferring their essence from stage to screen—they could draw upon much bigger audiences. Musicals enjoyed perhaps the biggest advantage from this stage-to-screen metamorphosis, partly because they could transport the viewer visually to a spectacular new place. Just think about the difference between The Sound of Music as play and film. I happen to be genuinely sorry that the Robert Wise/Julie Andrews movie adaptation of the Rogers and Hammerstein hit cut two important satirical songs that examine the Austrian mindset under the rise of Nazi ideology. Still, no stage version can possibly live up to the breathtaking grandeur of the Austrian Alps, as seen in the 1965 film. It of course was shot on location, all the better to show off the hills that are so fully alive in the hearts of our central characters.

 These days, though, a curious reversal is taking place. Original Broadway musicals are largely being supplanted by shows that have already proven their box-office potential by being based on hit films. (The idea, I suppose, is to add music, then stir.)  One of this year’s four Tony nominees for Best Original Musical was The Lost Boys, a musicalization of a kinky little 1987 film about young vampires on the prowl in Santa Cruz, California. On my recent trip to the Big Apple, I could not afford a pricey ticket for that apparent extravaganza. But I did manage to drop in on Death Becomes Her, now moving toward the end of a two-year run. The original Hollywood black comedy, about a magic potion that keeps vain women forever young and beautiful, was directed by Robert Zemeckis and headlined by Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rossellini, It was a macabre triumph, thanks to its star power and some colorful special effects. And how was the stage musical? My fellow audience members seemed to love it, and it landed seven Tony nominations, including two for stars Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard. To be sure, it took home only one statuette, richly deserved, for its wildly imaginative costumes. But I found the music forgettable and the cast mostly trying much too hard to amuse us with their audacity. It seemed, in short, something of a spoof of a spoof. My advice: stick to the movie.

 One curious sidenote: Flower Drum Song, one of Rogers and Hammerstein’s lesser hits, opened on Broadway in 1958, and was filmed three years later. Boasting an all-Asian cast, it is set in San Francisco’s Chinatown where different generations struggle to reconcile their ancient traditions and modern American ways. Long regarded as potentially offensive, the show’s book has always seemed in need of a rewrite. Now it has one, by Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang, and it was a joy for me to see this charming musical (staged by L.A.’s East West Players) on stage once again.