Your Classics Maven is excited to share that I have a work in progress, titled* “Classics for Everyone: the Musical.” I’ll outline the concept here.
A group of late authors who have penned works of classic literature decide to check in on earth from the spirit world. They discover their books have been adapted into wildly popular musical theater productions.
Victor Hugo speaks first. “I hear the people sing. They’re songs related to my 1,200+ page novel.” “Les Miserables,” first published in 1862, follows the life of Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread. Later, his attempts to rebuild his life while raising an adopted daughter are complicated by the relentless pursuit of the singularly-focused Inspector Javer. It’s a story of poverty, wealth, justice, vengeance, revolution, redemption, and every other theme Victor Hugo could cram in, plus treatises on engineering. In my script, Hugo learns that readers found his central story so enthralling it has endured to be adapted into many different forms over the years, including a board book. The stage musical, by Claude-Michel Schӧnberg and Alain Boublil, has run continuously on London’s West End since 1985. The movie was released six years ago this month.
Gaston Leroux, meanwhile, sees a woman singing on stage and asks, “Can that be Christine? Do I still have fans who stop and think of me?” The story of “The Phantom of the Opera,” a badly scarred man obsessed with a singer at the Paris Opera House, was published in serial form, beginning in 1909. The book made its appearance in 1910, with an English translation in 1911. The author lived long enough to see his story adapted into a silent film starring Lon Chaney. I plan for Leroux’s spirit to discover how his out-of-print book was brought back to popularity by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical in the 1980s, with a movie in 2004.
T.H. White, author of “The Once and Future King,” doesn’t have to wonder what his king might have done in terms of musical theater. Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and other denizens of their realm made their Broadway stage debut in “Camelot” (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe) in 1960, four years before White’s death. In his living form, White witnessed this production win multiple Tony Awards. In my story, his ghost will be thrilled to discover that simple folk can use their library cards to experience many versions of his epic tale.
*I do not actually have a work in progress with this title, but if I ever learn to compose music, I’ll make it my first project.
