The Sequels We Need
Published on Monday 24th August, 4.25pm, Written by Carrie Dunn
Frankly, I’m more than a little bored of waiting for Andrew Lloyd Webber to make his mind up and finally unveil Love Never Dies the musical.
What with the trio of simultaneous openings, the stars attached to the project, and the pressure of having to write a bombastic full-length musical for the first time in ages, the delay is understandable, but what else do we have to look forward to?
Jukeboxes and movie adaptations.
And thus it is that I’m starting to think that we don’t have enough sequels in Theatreland. Sure, they happen on screen all the time, but on stage? Not so much. Often there are good reasons — it would be the most tedious thing ever to sit through three hours of Marius and Cosette tweely singing their way around Paris, not a care in the world now that everyone else they know is dead, in Les Miserables 2. And, much as I love Oklahoma! when you take away the songs, the plot is relatively uneventful and all the loose ends are tied up (unless you count Ado Annie’s inability to stay faithful to Will Parker as something you might want to know about in greater detail through the medium of song).
Others, though, are ripe for extension. So, I present to you my suggestions for stage sequels. Admittedly there are some issues what with some composers and writers being inconveniently (and quite selfishly, I might add) dead, but I’m sure that there are ways around this minor obstacle.
My Fair Lady 2
Forget the utterly needless movie remake (particularly if they cast Keira Knightley as Eliza), this idea isn’t as daft as it may sound. In a later edition of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (the play on which the musical is based), some years after its original publication, he added a postscript explaining to eager readers what he envisaged happening to his characters in later years. Thought Eliza’s return to Higgins’s parlour meant they’d live happily ever after?
You thought wrong. Eliza marries Freddie, and they set up and run (rather badly, until Colonel Pickering makes them go to book-keeping classes) a flower shop; her father Alfred continues a career as a society wit; and as for Higgins and Pickering, they continue to live together at Wimpole Street, rather like Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s grumpy Old Gits. Eliza’s development into a practical wife and knowledgeable businesswoman might not be as ethereally beautiful as her development into a well-spoken society ornament, but it’s an engaging arc for an engaging heroine, and the continuing battles between her an Higgins (because, as Shaw explains, she doesn’t really like him) will all be ripe for setting to music. That’s particularly if the writers take the line that Higgins is a spurned suitor, and would have loved to have Eliza as his wife if only he could have changed his ways enough to move happily from curmudgeonly bachelorhood to matrimony.
Chicago 2
Come on, tell me honestly that you don’t want to see how Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly manage on the road with their vaudevillian double-act. Billy Flynn would wrest creative control (and the 10 per cent of all royalties) from Mama Morton and become their manager; and they’d make inroads into the Hollywood studio system any which way they could, all the while with poor Amos as an unwitting dupe, trailing in their wake and carrying their luggage. Plenty of room for satire on the nature of celebrity and showbiz, and plenty of room for fabulous Fosse-esque choreography.
Hairspray 2
Yes it’s cheery and feelgood, but I maintain that this is no piece of frothy fluff. I genuinely want to know how Penny and Seaweed cope with the social pressures of their relationship in 1960s Baltimore – yes, ”inter-racial dancing” may have broken out at one TV studio, but that’s not going to change everyone else’s attitudes overnight. I want to believe that their adorable puppy-love is strong enough to fend off the prejudice, but Penny will be all alone in the world – her father is still AWOL, her mother will disown her, and her best friend Tracy will be too busy with her putative television career – so will she have the strength of character to stand by her man? Obviously Tracy and Link will have the perfect wedding that she so eloquently sang about in I Can Hear The Bells, but will his narcissism and tiresome lack of principles ever grate on his loving, socially-aware wife’s nerves? The public demand to be told.
Which musicals do you think deserve a sequel?
I think an Avenue Q sequel would be easy enough to do, just add a new set of residents, keep some of the old ones and there you have it.
Also, Blood Brothers – Mrs J’s life after the two die. It could start right at the end of the first one and then could tell the story of Mickey and Linda’s son growing up fatherless.
If anybody suggests Wicked 2 without knowing about Son of a Witch I may slap them.
I think this is the worst article i have ever read!
Don’t forget prequels! They are all the rage right now
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY is the ONLY reason to do a remake of My Fair Lady. I don’t know what your bias against her is and I could care less. Just report the news and keep your personal agenda out of it. We don’t want to hear it. Keira ROCKS so get over it!
MISS SAIGON 2: Kim and Chris’s son grows up and tries to find out about his parentage while getting caught up in a Second Vietnam War, discovering the truth about his penchant for expensive helicopters and a little lesson on how tasteful it is to perform in yellowface.
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF 2: The Jews of Anatevka move to Orange County, CA. Will Tevye win the surfboarding competition? Which of his remaining daughters will become movie stars? And what will Yente do for a living now? Also works as a television sitcom with added laugh track.
RENT 2: Everybody grows the hell up and gets a damn job.
Gil – loving Fiddler on the Roof 2. You should totally write it.
Mike Hill – report the news? If hard news is what you want, then why read a whimsical theatre blog?