Is it curtains for originality?

As the West End prepares to host a musical based on 2004 film 50 First Dates’, Isabel Dempsey asks theatre makers if the romantic comedy adaptations boom is killing creativity

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Mean Girls, Clueless, The Devil Wears Prada, Pretty Woman, 10 Things I Hate About You. No, this isn’t a list of the top-rated romantic comedies on IMDb – though add in Bridget Jones’ Diary and it might as well be. What it is, is a list (and by no means an exhaustive one) of romcoms that have been or soon will be turned into a splashy song-and-dance musical.

Every month that list grows – West End announcements that are met with whoops and hurrahs from devout fans who have been waiting all their lives to see Miranda Priestly break out into song. Certainly, it’s a small wonder that Hugh Grant’s devilish book editor is yet to hip-thrust across a stage to some noxious number titled “Is Skirt Off Sick?” – though not for lack of trying. Lily Allen reportedly took a crack at a Bridget Jones musical adaptation back in 2009. Mercifully, it never took off.

The latest romcom to get the musical treatment, however, is decidedly less iconic than its predecessors. Released in 2004, 50 First Dates starred Adam Sandler as a womaniser who falls for Drew Barrymore’s charming art teacher only to discover that she has short-term memory loss. Although a box office success, the film itself was largely forgettable, making its West End debut this September all the more strange.

Granted, this isn’t an altogether new trend. Since the 1950s, musicals based on films such as Billy Elliot and Hairspray have become a beloved genre, but it was the Broadway success of Legally Blonde in 2007 that can-can kicked off a new line of Nineties and Noughties romcom productions. As more and more musicals try to replicate that model, however, it seems original ideas are being pushed to the side.

Hayley Canham was 16 when she wrote her first musical, Medea