8. Reimagining Classics: Approaches to Stage Adaptation

Reimagining Classics: Approaches to Stage Adaptation

Adaptation has always formed a key part of my career as a playwright. Unusually, it’s actually where I started in my journey writing for the stage. Arguably, the more “usual” path is to establish your voice as a writer through original work, and then you might turn to adaptation, meaning that you always bring your USP as an individual to the work. Conversely, I feel I learned so much about story through working with other texts, teaching me about structure and character arc, and also forcing me to consider the difference in format and medium between a novel and a play. What should I keep, what should I cut, what should I change?

I loved discovering storytelling through this lens, but it was undoubtedly something of a complicated process. It was only when I developed my own true voice and style through original writing that I returned to adaptation with a much stronger sense of why I wanted to retell a particular story at a particular moment in time and in my career. For me, this is the most important question to ask of any creative work – why now?

Having just written a new adaptation of Jane Eyre over Christmas and New Year (a story I’ve adapted three times already for stage and audioplay), I thought it was a good time to reflect on the challenges and joys of adaptation, as well as thinking about the different approaches out there and how I’ve found them. Adaptation always comes with a certain amount of pressure and arguably, a stronger awareness from earlier in the process of the audience than you sometimes have when developing your own original play.

The Faithful Adaptation

The faithful adaptation is kind of what it says on the tin: it sticks as closely as possible to the original text, aiming to honour its essence and stay true to its characters, plot, and themes.

This approach often appeals to purists who love the original story and don’t want it tampered with too much. But faithfulness doesn’t mean simply copying the text word-for-word. The best adaptations in this style find creative ways to translate the original into a theatrical language. A novel is not a play, and what works on the page doesn’t always work on stage.

Take Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, for example. In Emma Rice’s 2021 stage adaptation, she remained loyal to the stormy drama of the book but leaned into the theatricality of the medium: live music, a Greek chorus, and a literal embodiment of the Yorkshire Moors. The result was a production that felt true to Brontë’s spirit but also vibrantly theatrical.

The danger with this approach is that it can become reverent. Plays are living, breathing things, and an overly faithful adaptation risks feeling like a museum piece – beautiful but static. This approach is absolutely where I started – scanning through the novel for scenes I should adapt, lines of dialogue I want to keep. But for me, now, I want to make bolder choices.

The Modern Reimagining

Modern reimaginings transplant a classic story into a contemporary setting, using its themes to speak to today’s world. This approach can make old stories feel immediate and relevant, especially when tackling issues that resonate across centuries: power, love, injustice, revolution.

The challenge here is walking the tightrope between homage and invention. How much of the original do you keep? How far can you push the update without losing the essence of the story? Modern settings can offer fresh perspectives, but they can also risk reducing the text to a set of bullet points.

I would say this approach is the closest to how I work these days. My new adaptation of Jane Eyre is faithful to the text in many ways – the plot points are the same as the original – but the dialogue has a more modern lilt than the original on the whole. Tonally, it sits in a space that’s both Charlotte Brontë and me, and I have chosen particular themes to bring out. Yes there are elements of love story here, but Rochester is also an extremely narcissistic, manipulative man who gaslights those around him. For me, the truth of the story lies in Jane’s decision to believe in herself, to make a choice and claim her agency when the world around her doesn’t want to allow her to do that.

The Subversive Adaptation

Subversive adaptations take a classic and turn it completely on its head. They interrogate, twist, or even outright contradict the original text, offering an alternative perspective that challenges the audience to think differently about the story.

One of my favourite (and for me currently, particularly relevant) examples is Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys’s novel-turned-play that reframes Jane Eyre from the perspective of Bertha Mason, the so-called “madwoman in the attic.” While Brontë gives us a largely one-sided view of Bertha, Rhys transforms her into a fully fleshed-out character, exploring her life, her voice, and the colonial context Brontë only hints at.

Arguably, elements of the subversive cross over naturally with the modern interpretation. In my Jane Eyre, I take inspiration from the versions of Bertha that have gone before – not just Brontë and Jean Rhys’ but there is a debt and a legacy owed to other material and productions that have informed my thoughts about the character and story. From Sally Cookson’s production at The National to the academic analysis, The Madwoman in the Attic, there are so many interpretations of classic texts available and it’s exciting to immerse all of these and find your own way of telling the story – the themes you want to enhance.

Subversion isn’t for everyone. Some audience members (and producers) can feel protective of the original, and radically reinterpreting a classic can spark controversy. But for me, that’s the point of a great adaptation – they don’t aim to comfort; they aim to provoke.

The Meta Adaptation

A meta adaptation takes a classic story and adds an extra layer of self-awareness, often blurring the lines between the original text, the process of adaptation, and the audience’s expectations.

One example is Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin’s Matilda the Musical. While Roald Dahl’s original is a straightforward (and wonderfully quirky) children’s book, the musical leans into the idea of storytelling itself. Matilda becomes not just a character but a storyteller, spinning her own narrative as an act of defiance and creativity.

Another example is Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, which deconstructs the structure of fairy tales, asking what happens after “happily ever after.” Meta adaptations like these invite the audience to reflect on the act of storytelling itself: why we tell certain stories, how they’ve shaped our culture, and what they reveal about us.

The challenge with meta adaptations is keeping the balance between self-awareness and telling the story. I always try to incorporate elements of theatricality into my writing for the stage – what’s the point in pretending we’re not all here to experience a story being told to us? – and for me, it adds a richness to the world and characters, and especially to what you want to say.

It’s probably already clear that I definitely don’t have a definitive answer to this – partly because there isn’t anyway, but also because my own approach is to borrow from all these areas and create my own “patchwork” approach that is specific to each project. That feels right to me – stories and characters are unique, so the approach should respect and reflect this.

What’s most important is having a clear vision. Why this story? Why now? What do you want to say with it, and how can you make it resonate with your audience? And for me with my new adaptation of Jane Eyre? I wanted to find a clear pathway through a multi-layered story, that has elements of romance, of bildungsroman, of the Gothic and so much more. For me, the reason this story has stayed with me – and why I’ve been interested in it enough to adapt it so many times – is that as I change, so my approach evolves. Jane and Rochester have changed in my eyes as I’ve grown up and experienced life, and I want my work to reflect who I am in the here and now. The one element that always resonates is Jane’s fierce determination to be her own person, and to choose the life she wants – whether or not others agree with her choice. She goes back to Rochester at the end (spoilers) – was she right to? Some say yes, others scream no – I’ve done both. And so this adaptation respects that uncertainty – that murkiness. Her choice from the original novel remains the same, but the lens it’s viewed through invites conversation and discrepancy. I want each audience member to ask themselves what they would have done, and whether Jane’s ending is happy or a tragedy. Whatever the character herself believes.

Jane Eyre by The Asylum Players will play at The Blue Room Lincoln from 20th to 29th March 2025.