Matters of Medium

Going from the page to the stage can be tricky enough when dealing with something that was written as dramatic literature, and trying to translate a work of art from one medium to another carries a lot of risks. A novel can succeed in a number of different ways, and not all of those elements can be reproduced on stage.

Plainsong at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts was a perfect example. I've never read the best-selling novel on which the play was based, but I have to wonder who thought that it would lend itself well to a stage adaptation. The Aristotelian unities are not and should not be iron-clad rules, but there is a reason his writings have been so influential. A novel can weave together different narrative threads into a coherent whole in a way that the theatre cannot.

The modern stage has the technical capacity to overcome many of the logistical challenges of such multifaceted storytelling, but simply being able to shift move rapidly through a series of short scenes is not enough. The stage adaptation of the His Dark Materials trilogy at the National Theatre in London was a good example of how it can be done well, and it succeeded because the heart of the novels was built around two central characters, and the stage adaptation was able to channel all of the action through that relationship.

Plainsong was engaging in spite of its structure thanks to skill of several of the actors, but it is a shame that they did not have more to work with. Several of the characters were clearly supposed to be emotionally significant, but in the rush to get everything from the novel on stage, they were not given any opportunity to engage with the audience. The fact that there were so many characters fighting for the audience's attention and sympathy made it all the more remarkable that some of the actors were still able to make those connections.