which can obscure aspects of performance that the stage and screen have in common (Kidnie 2009: 104). This is not to say that the text only exists in performance, as Levin has identified because then ‘there would be no independent “reality” apart from the performance that could be understood’ (1986: 548). What does exist of the performance, and can to a certain extent be referred to in terms of a material object, is a ‘production’. As Osipovich argues, ‘a production is a series of acting, blocking and design choices that are rehearsed until the run of the show is set’ (2006: 464). Whilst each performance will have a unique quality that will be difficult to quantify, detailing these features ‘will still be vital for putting into context the unique character of every performance’ (2006: 464). The three features that Osipovich identifies will be the focus of this chapter although I will extend the analysis to include sound and music as both theatre and film often use aural elements to complement their visual means of communication. I do not deny the presence of the written text as this is one aspect of the ‘work’ as Kidnie would describe it, but neither do I allow the slipperiness of identifying the performance to preclude analysis of those qualities that are bound up with the written text but exist outside of it as well.
The first section of this chapter will examine the opening of stage and screen versions of Bola Agbaje’s British comedy Gone Too Far (2008/2013), firstly according to comparisons of space, time and structure, which is traditionally how stage-to-screen adaptations have been analysed (Bazin 1967; Manvell 1979; Davies 1990), but then extending the analysis to consider one crucial aspect of performance and how it is configured in the adaptation. Turning to August Wilson’s Fences (1987), I will examine how the stage design in various productions has been referenced in the film and look at how its function in the play is taken up by the mise en scène of a key sequence. This will be contrasted by looking at adaptations of Samuel Beckett’s Play (1966), which, because of the abstract nature of the space as conceived for the stage, raises certain challenges in its transfer to the screen. The next section will consider issues of acting and performance and the implications of the contribution of star discourses for fundamentally altering adaptations in their transition to the screen. Bill Naughton’s stage play Alfie (1963) will be examined for how the central character has been played across stage and screen. Finally, I will argue that sound has traditionally been overlooked in adaptation studies but that it often marks a key element of the negotiation of affect in the transition from stage to screen production. This will be discussed in reference to films where scores/sound effects are added in the film adaptation to convey character or theme. I will examine theatre and film versions of Amadeus (1979) and look at the integration of visual and aural elements in stage and screen versions of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
Cardullo contends that analysis of stage-to-screen adaptations needs to consider how the film translates the theatre play’s structure and its utilization of time and space (2012). As Bazin argued, ‘there can be no theatre without architecture’ indicating that space for performance is organized in terms of the area/s for the actors, for the audience and optionally a setting for the dramatic action. He maintained that the consequences of this organization of theatrical space render the stage a ‘privileged spot removed from everyday experience which renders significant any object or action that appears on it’ (1967: 44). Davies argues that these elements of engagement with the space fundamentally change with the film and its audience calling it ‘a collusion with the cinematic medium – not with the director, designers and actors who present the dramatic work’ (1990: 6). With film the action is not bounded within a demarcated space but rather parts of it are captured; the audience must believe that reality goes on beyond what can be seen because, ‘the screen is not a frame like a picture but a mask which allows only part of the action to be seen’ (Bazin 1971: 105). The spectator of film can be put into a different relationship with the action depending on how that action is framed by the camera, and the variety of viewing positions available to the audience of the play in the theatre is denied by the fixed perspective of the camera.
Closely related to different organizations of space are theatre and film’s treatment of time. Just as film can offer different perspectives on the action from close up to long shot and is not bound to one continuous use of space, it is also not restricted to the continuous and sequential time marked by the duration of a play. As Cardullo identifies, the realization that whilst ‘on the stage, an actor crossing a room has to cross it step by step; on the screen, he can come in at the door and immediately be at the other side of the room’ was a key moment in the development of cinematic technique (2012: 25). Editing, both visually and sonically, can link two different times together, such as the move across two decades in Citizen Kane (1941) between Thatcher’s words ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘a Happy New Year’, which enables Kane to move sequentially in the drama from a child to a young man. Structurally, the play and film are also different with the shot being the key component of cinematic structure, against the scene, or more precisely as Cardullo contends, the ‘theatrical “beat” within the scene that introduces or resolves conflict’ (2012: 27).
Anthony Davies argues therefore that for adapters working on translating material from stage to screen, there are two strategies available to them. They can either
decide to treat dramatic action with the object of preserving its theatrical essence as far as possible by simply photographing the staged performance on the stage space [or] effect an entire visual transformation by moving the action from the confines of the theatrical enclosure and [create] new relationships between the actor and décor, between space and time and between the dramatic presentation and the audience.
(1990: 9)
Although Davies is rather binary in his arguments here (plays adapted for the screen might contain both a proscenium arch framing and a more mobile use of camera and that does not make them any less ‘cinematic’) his formulation offers a framework for thinking through how time, space and structure are adapted between theatre and film.
This can be demonstrated by an analysis of the opening of Bola Agbaje’s Gone Too Far, originally performed at the Royal Court Upstairs in 2007 and then adapted for the screen in 2013 by Agbaje and directed by Destiny Ekaragha. The play is about the conflict between two brothers, one British born and one who has just returned from living in Nigeria. It entertainingly dismantles the idea of a homogenous black ‘community’ showing characters whose sense of identity is contingent on how they relate to ideas of indigeneity and the diaspora. The Court’s production of the play had a simple set consisting of black drapes and props to help delineate particular places, such as the newsagents where the characters go to try and buy some milk. The Court production also interspersed the scenes with dance sequences where performers moved around the stage to a grime soundtrack to give a more abstract sense of youthful energy beyond the action of the play. The film on the other hand takes great pains to set the action on the streets and estates where the play was ostensibly set. The writer of both the play and screenplay emphasized how the South London setting was a key factor in the transfer of the play to the screen:
When I transferred it into a film all I needed to do was transfer it back into the setting that it originally came from […]. It was important to put that world on the screen – to make that world interesting because we wanted to put Peckham on the screen but in a really good light.
(Into Film Clubs 2015: n.pag.)
This ‘opening out’ is a common strategy of many stage-to-screen adaptations, as they connect with a world that is implied or referred to by the play but can be realized more effectively by using a photographic medium. In other words, as Palmer and Bray note, ‘the film medium possesses the ability to deepen the sense in which dramatic presentation depends on the interaction of characters with a world we can recognize fully as our own’ (2013: 10). The play’s first scene is set in Yemi’s bedroom, where the two brothers are unhappily sharing an obviously limited space. They are there to do squats administered as punishment by their mum, who is heard offstage
