I don't know if Inge's material had any innate allure to songwriters.
Maybe those songwriters just loved the original stories and characters, and wanted to hear them sing. Notably, Josh Logan, who directed the Broadway productions of ''Picnic'' and ''Bus Stop,'' also directed the big-screen adaptations, and was involved with their short-lived musical versions.
I always found it fascinating that Bob Merrill turned TWO Eugene O'Neill plays into musicals, one after the other.
He took ''Anna Christie'' and transformed it into ''New Girl in Town'' (1957) and ''Ah, Wilderness!'' became ''Take Me Along!'' (1959).
It's also possible that some playwrights' estates are more amenable to musicalizations than others.
As for Tennessee Williams, there was a 1997 S.F. Opera of ''A Streetcar Named Desire,'' by Andre Previn, with Renee Fleming as Blanche.
And there's a 2014 musical of ''The Glass Menagerie,'' called ''Blue Roses,'' by Nancy Ford and Mimi Turque.
Its world premiere was at the Lyric Stage in Irving, Texas, starring Sally Mayes as Amanda Wingfield. The York Theatre in NYC had scheduled a reading of ''Blue Roses,'' with Anita Gillette as Amanda, on April 6, 2020, but that date got canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. |
