How Often Are Broadway Plays Adapted Into Musicals?

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This time, the reader question was: With Purlie Victorious returning to Broadway, what are other plays that were revived on Broadway after their musical adaptations premiered?

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I love that we’re kicking off the fall theatre season with this question! If you have any other questions about new shows making their way to Broadway this autumn, send them my way.

The Music Box is currently home to the first Broadway revival of Purlie Victorious, the 1961 play by Ossie Davis described as “a non-Confederate romp through the cotton patch”. Leslie Odom Jr. is starring in the role originated by Davis himself; Ruby Dee and Alan Alda also appeared in the original production. Purlie Victorious, about a preacher and his community, was turned into a 1970 Broadway musical called Purlie. Purlie shared so much with its source material that Davis was given partial book credit although he didn’t work directly on the musical, which was nominated for Best Musical at the Tony Awards. While it didn’t win, two of its actors, Cleavon Little and Melba Moore both did, in their respective categories. The musical was revived at Encores! in 2005, starring Blair Underwood. The current revival of the play Purlie Victorious is its first.

This question is specifically about plays that returned to Broadway in new productions after their musical adaptations premiered there. So, the following shows would not fall into this category, but are worth mentioning for context. The joyous 1966 Jerry Herman-scored Mame was an adaptation of 1956’s hit play Auntie Mame (which in turn was adapted from the uproarious book by Patrick Dennis). The musical, which ran for over 1,500 performances on Broadway, counted both the play and the book as source material. Auntie Mame has not lit up the Great White Way since Mame premiered.

Similarly, the Best Musical winner that found two sisters wondering “why-o-why-o-why-o” they ever left Ohio, Wonderful Town, was based on both the play My Sister Eileen, as well as original stories by Ruth McKenney. My Sister Eileen debuted in 1940, moving to four different Broadway houses before closing in 1943, but has not been seen on Broadway since Wonderful Town hit the Winter Garden in 1953. Wonderful Town was also revived on Broadway, 50 years later.

Broadway musicals stopped being as frequently based on plays, and transitioned to being more often based on movies, as movies became to the American public the cultural storytelling touchstone that plays once were. However, Broadway still sees the occasional outlier of a musical based on a play.

One of these was the 2015 Chita Rivera-led The Visit, by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally. The musical, in gestation for many years, was based on Friedrich Duerrenmatt’s play of the same name, which debuted on Broadway in 1958, after its original production in 1956 in Zurich under the title Der Besuch der alten Dame. The play version of The Visit has been revived twice, but not since its 2015 musical adaptation.

Other examples include William Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, which hasn’t been seen on Broadway in its original play form since its jubilant 1972 musical adaptation and Maurine Dallas Watkins’ Chicago (1926), which inspired the longest running American musical in Broadway history but hasn’t ever been revived itself. Perennially revived Hello, Dolly! Is based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, which was in turn an updated version of his earlier play The Merchant of Yonkers; neither The Matchmaker nor The Merchant of Yonkers has been seen on Broadway since Dolly! appeared in 1964. Green Grow the Lilacs has not hit the scene since its 1943 adaptation Oklahoma! changed the musical theatre forever. Same goes for the journey of Liliom and its 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein treatment, Carousel. The 1973 cult flop musical Seesaw is based on William Gibson’s 1958 Two for the Seesaw, which has never returned to Broadway.

There are also musicals based on plays where the plays themselves have never been seen on Broadway at all, instead gaining attention in other arenas. These include Sweeney Todd, by Christopher Bond, which was seen in the UK, and inspired Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim’s adaptation, and the recent Kimberly Akimbo. Kimberly Akimbo was transformed into a musical by Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire, and is based on Abaire’s original play, which was seen off-Broadway in 2000.

And now back to our question regarding the revival of the play Purlie Victorious and its re-appearance after its beloved musical adaptation, Purlie!

1956’s emotional, complex Frank Loesser musical, The Most Happy Fella, was adapted from the 1924 Sidney Howard play They Knew What They Wanted. Fella has been revived on Broadway three times, most recently in 1992, and Wanted has popped back up three times itself, most recently in 1976.

The 1957 George Abbott and Bob Fosse helmed musical New Girl in Town may have been a hit as well as a nominee for Best Musical and a winner for its lead actresses, Gwen Verdon and Thelma Ritter, in a historic Tony Awards tie. But, it has never been revived on Broadway. Based on Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, the musical treats its female characters in a way that might seem distractingly dated to theatergoers. That said, the source material has been on Broadway since the musical’s debut, appearing after its 1921 debut in 1952, 1977, and 1993.

New Girl in Town wasn’t the only Broadway musical of the 1950s based on a Eugene O’Neill play. 1959’s Take Me Along was adapted from Ah, Wilderness! Wilderness continued to be revived even after Take Me Along’s appearance, boasting four Broadway revivals, with the most recent in 1998.

Like New Girl in Town in a different way, Raisin was a hit musical in its time but has never been revived on Broadway since its 1973 debut. The musical’s vitally important source material, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, has been revived on Broadway twice since Raisin’s debut, in 2004 and 2014.

Pygmalion and its musical adaptation, My Fair Lady, have been seen in tandem on Broadway since Fair Lady took Broadway by storm in 1956. Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw was first seen on Broadway in 1914, and made its way back for five different revivals, including in 1987 and 2007, while Fair Lady has been revived four times, most recently in 2018.

Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story have a comparable story. William Shakespeare’s popular tragedy debuted on a New York stage in 1754, before there was a modern definition of Broadway. Since the turn of the 20th century, the play has been seen on Broadway 32 times! This is not to mention all of its off-Broadway productions, including Shakespeare in the Park. West Side Story, the musical adaptation by Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim, debuted the year following My Fair Lady, and stunned audiences, becoming a landmark American musical. Since then, both Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story have continued to be revived on Broadway.

These are just a few examples of plays that have been revived on Broadway since their musical adaptations premiered, similar to Broadway’s current production of Purlie Victorious!

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