History Bowdlerise / Theater

[[redirect:Bowdlerize/{{Theatre}}]]

* The very first words (sung by the black chorus) of the musical ''Show Boat'' have been Bowdlerized in various ways over the years. The most faithful of the three film versions (1936, Universal) began "'''darkies''' all work on de Mississippi." The major Broadway revival in 1946 (for which Oscar Hammerstein made a few other revisions) changed the line to "'''colored folks''' work on de Mississippi," which has become the most commonly seen variant. At least this keeps the sense of the following line ("...while de white folks play") intact, unlike another once common variant: "'''here we all''' work on de Mississippi." The 1966 Lincoln Center production, like MGM's 1951 film, dodged the subject by abridging the opening chorus (and the second verse to "Ol' Man River," which reprises the excised section); in these versions, to quote theatre historian Miles Kreuger, ''nobody'' worked on the Mississippi. Kreuger and a few other musical theatre buffs, citing the fairly serious treatment of race relations in ''Show Boat'', have expressed their preference for the original opening lines as they were sung in 1927:
-->"Niggers all work on de Mississippi,\\
Niggers all work while de white folks play..."
* In TheFifties, Ira Gershwin replaced all uses of "nigger" in ''Theatre/PorgyAndBess'': about twenty, by his count. It's fortunate that the earlier stage version of ''Porgy'' has succumbed to AdaptationDisplacement, as it used the word considerably more often.
* Passages of three Creator/GilbertAndSullivan patter songs from ''Theatre/TheMikado'' and ''Theatre/PrincessIda'' are generally changed from the original text to get rid of the word "nigger". This was first done in the lifetime and with the assent of Creator/WSGilbert, after American audiences had pointed out that the word was a rude insult in the United States.
-->''"And the niggers they'll be bleaching" => "And they'll practise what they're preaching"'' (''Princess Ida'', "They Intend to Send a Wire to the Moon")\\
''"There's the nigger serenader, and the others of his race" => "There's the banjo serenader, and the others of his race"'' (''The Mikado'', "I've Got a Little List")\\
''"Is blacked like a nigger with permanent walnut juice" => "Is painted with vigour and permanent walnut juice"'' (''The Mikado'', "My Object All Sublime")
* There was some Bowdlerization on original cast albums of the 1960s and earlier, though it ought to be noted that even the original lyrics used GoshDangItToHeck to an inconsistent extent.
** One of the most consistently censored expressions was "son of a bitch," several instances of which were removed from ''Theatre/TheMostHappyFella'' (though two instances of it were already supposed to be inaudibly whispered under Cleo's breath).
** In "Get Me to the Church On Time" from ''Theatre/MyFairLady'', "For God's sake, get me to the church on time" became "Be sure and get me to the church on time."
** The original cast album of ''Theatre/CityOfAngels'' changes the end of the "Theme from 'City of Angels'" from "kiss your ass goodbye" to "kiss this world goodbye," though this may have been a stylistic revision since the recording was made in 1990 and [[ForgottenThemeTuneLyrics neither of these lines are actually sung in the show]].
** The original cast album of ''Theatre/TheGoldenApple'' changes the line about Circe being "available for a fee," though the alternate line has also been sung in some productions.
* In the original Broadway version of ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'', there was the song "Johanna" sung by Judge Turpin, where he said how suddenly grown up Johanna seemed, and how beautiful she was, while he's watching her through a hole on the wall of her room that Turpin did himself. He starts flagellating himself as the song goes on, and climaxes (the stage direction says so) while screaming "God!!!" The Vocal Score says it was cut for reasons of time, but it was squicky enough to just let it out. True, [[spoiler:Turpin's crush on Johanna is showed in the play and is a plot point, but that song was more disturbing than just him saying that he wanted to marry her.]]
* When TheMusical ''Theatre/SpringAwakening'' performed a medley at the Tony Awards, several lyrics to "The Bitch of Living" were changed to please CBS. Including, among others, "nothing but your hand" to "getting what you can" and "breasts" to "chest". The company then [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] the censorship in the "Totally Fucked" portion by [[FingerOnLips censoring themselves]] on the words "ass" and "fucked". ([[Theatre/ForbiddenBroadway "Totally Bleeped,"]] indeed.) When the show performed another medley on ''Good Morning America'', part of "Totally Fucked" was also performed, but this time with the phrase "totally fucked" changed to "totally stuck" and "kiss your sorry ass goodbye" as "kiss your sorry life goodbye".
** In the {{Ham4Ham}} performance, Andy Mientus and Krysta Rodriguez didn't sing the f-bomb, but signed it. They sang "You can kiss your sorry ass goodbye," to audience laughter, though.
** Gloriously averted with the American Sign Language revival's Tony Awards performance. None of the original English lyrics were censored, and only one ASL sign was ("screw") because, well, the one used in the show wasn't exactly subtle about which action it represents.
* The original published version of the song "You Can Drive A Person Crazy" from ''Theatre/{{Company}}'' altered the last word of "if a person was a fag" to "drag"; some singers use this. For the 1996 revival of the show, Music/StephenSondheim rewrote the line and its complementary rhyme (which since then has been restored to the original version):
-->I could understand a person\\
If he said to go away\\
I could understand a person\\
If he happened to be gay
* A modern example of Bowdlerisation is when ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew'' is changed to make it more "feminist" especially the ending. The most ridiculous examples have Petruchio and Katharine end up with a happy marriage where all their verbal abuse has ended, even though this was what neither character wanted from the other in the first place.
** It's not the first time ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew'' has been bowdlerized. Many high school versions of the play remove Petruchio's line "What? With my tongue in your tail?"
* Some sexual allusions in ''Theatre/TheRiseAndFallOfTheCityOfMahagonny'' were censored for early German productions: the "love" scene no longer depicted a busy brothel, and a duet for Jim and Jenny was interpolated to compensate for the scene's abridgment or outright excision. The lyrics of the recurring chorus which helps introduce that scene were changed to avoid use of the word "Liebesakt" (a common German term for sexual intercourse). Creator/WHAuden and Chester Kallman's translation was based on this version.
* Some school productions of ''Theatre/LesMiserables'' leave in "send the slut away" and "I should have known the bitch could bite" but change "Damn their warnings, damn their lies" to "Blast their warnings, blast their lies." The "Lovely Ladies" song is also surprisingly uncensored, while Valjean hitting Javert over the head with a chair is removed.
** The chair thing might have more to do with the potential physical danger involved than with censoring.
** Actually, the chair thing is a new addition, following someone's [[SarcasmMode brilliant]] idea to add more physical brawling to the adaptation, starting around 2010. Prior to that physical confrontation was only alluded to as a threat: e.g. "I am warning you Javert/I'm a stronger man by far".
* In all twentieth-century versions of ''Theatre/StarlightExpress'', Ashley carried a pack of cigarettes and frequently mimed smoking them. The second U.S. tour made her a smoking car InNameOnly and heavily implied that she'd turned to promiscuous sex instead, which would be fine if it hadn't been presented in the sleaziest manner possible.
** The Broadway adaptation of the show rewrote "Belle the Sleeping Car" to emphasize Belle's career as a prostitute, which would ordinarily be the opposite of this trope...except that the Broadway version removed some drug references and greatly increased the comedic factor of the character, rather than portraying her as the resigned, despondent old woman she was in the London show. [[http://bellesdomain.co.uk/belle.htm See this link to contrast the two.]]
** The 1992 London revamp excised the SerialKiller villain, who provided the catalyst for most of the conflict in act two. Ironically, the rewritten reversal was more violent than before.
* At least one High School production of ''Theatre/AChorusLine'' turned the song "Tits and Ass" into "This And That". Which, in a way, turned a song about stage titillation into a song about prostitution (!).
** Another high school changed the song to "Swerves and Curves," and song is about Val going to the health club to improve her figure instead of getting plastic surgery.
** The 2013 London revival has her lyric in "And" 'tied up and raped at seven' changed to 'tied up ''at home'' at seven'.
* Many productions of ''Theatre/GuysAndDolls'' have the Hot Box dancers dressed in less {{Stripperific}} costumes.
* The school edition of ''Theatre/AvenueQ'' completely rewrites "TheInternetIsForPorn" as "My Social Life is Online," a song about Facebook and other networking sites. Also, the show shortens the scenes with the Bad Idea Bears to focus less on drinking, changes the names of two of the characters (Lucy the Slut is now called Lucy, and Mrs. Thistletwat is now Mrs. Butz), and two songs have been removed.
* This trope actually makes sense for the school edition of ''Theatre/OnceOnThisIsland,'' because the cast consists wholly of ButNotTooBlack wealthy folk and very dark-skinned peasants. Their racial divide is a major source of their conflict, but this typecasting isn't very common in the average school, so this divide is removed, leaving only the emphasis between the poor and the rich.
* Some productions of ''Theatre/TheFantasticks'' eliminate references to rape and replace "It Depends On What You Pay" with "Abductions (And So Forth)".
* In ''Theatre/{{Follies}}'', "heck" is sometimes substituted for "hell" in "Broadway Baby," probably because the consonant sound actually fits the song's meter better. The four-letter word at the end of "The Right Girl" seems to change depending on the production, though sometimes the low-key coda is omitted so the AngryDance can have a big finish.
* The early Broadway run of ''Theatre/{{Grease}}'' had much more profanity, including one of Sandy's final lines being "Nah, fuck it". After complaints were made about the language and after the film version rose in popularity, the Broadway script was gradually cleaned up to be more family-friendly. This also necessitated lyric changes to "Mooning" and "Greased' Lightnin'" (although the film had kept the original, raunchier lyrics of the latter).
** The version that ran at Kingston Mines was filled with even vulgar language and ethnic slurs (ie: "Wop", "Polack") that were ordered to be cleaned up for the Broadway script. These were restored for a 40th anniversary revival in 2011.
** A kid-friendly "Grease Jr."/"Grease: The School Version" script exists for schools to perform, with the run-time shortened to about 60 minutes and the plot drastically cut up for content and timing purposes. Among the noticeable edits is the removal of Rizzo's pregnancy-scare towards the end of the play.
* One edition of the 1917 Sigmund Romberg operetta ''Maytime'' changes the DanceSensation song "Jump Jim Crow" to "Dance the Do-Si-Do."
* The movie rendition of ''[[Theatre/{{Oklahoma}} Oklahoma!]]'' came out during the time of the Hayes Code, and so had to change some of the song lyrics. In the stage version of "Kansas City", the second verse contains the lines: "I could swear that she was padded from her shoulder to her heel, but later in the second act when she begun to peel, she proved that ev'rything she had was absolutely real!". The film had to change it to "I could swear that she was padded from her shoulder to her heel, and then she started dancin' and her dancin' made me feel / that every single thing she had was absolutely real!".
* The theatrical play ''Picnic'' got made into a movie during the Hayes Code years, and a line about a bunch of girls getting it on with the hero was changed into a line about the hero drinking martinis with the girls. Both versions followed this line with the hero saying, "They must have thought I was Franchise/{{Superman}}."
* For a long time, the only version of the ''Theatre/SeventeenSeventySix'' film (apart from the supercut on the laserdisc) was heavily edited. They cut the exchange between Franklin and Dickinson about calling an ox a bull ("he's thankful for the honor but he'd much rather have restored what's rightfully his"/"when did you first notice they were missing, sir") and Washington's complaint about the whoring and drinking in New Brunswick. And because it offended Nixon, the song "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men." These were later restored with the DVD release.
* An extreme case -- the Junior edition of ''Theatre/IntoTheWoods'' eliminates the show's ''second act'', wherein the MassiveMultiplayerCrossover of fairy tales becomes a dark {{Deconstruction}} of same.
* In the original production of ''Theatre/{{Cabaret}}'', the WhamLine at the end of "If You Could See Her" had to be changed from "She wouldn't look Jewish at all" to "She isn't a meeskite at all." Joel Grey resisted this change, and he sings the original line in the movie (which doesn't include the song "Meeskite").
* The school edition of ''Theatre/TheTwentyFifthAnnualPutnamCountySpellingBee'' changes the song My Unfortunate Erection to My Unfortunate Distraction, making the song about puberty in general rather than about his erection.
* One memetic example is the notable SoBadItsGood high school production of ''Theatre/{{Heathers}}'' performed before the show was licensed to schools, resulting in a lot of amusing changes. In addition to editing down several songs and adding some pretty odd new lines, it removes Kurt and Ram entirely, as well as the songs they sing ("Blue" and its reprise) or that are sung about them ("Dead Gay Son"). Since Kurt and Ram thus don't die in this version, the punchline of Heather Macnamara's speech about her insecurity went from "All my rides to school are dead" to the confusing "All my rides to school are ''gay or'' dead."
** In the official high school production, the raunchy songs were rewritten to dial down profanity, sexual content, and drug references, and "Blue" was replaced with a new song, "You're Welcome." The latter change was carried over to the 2018 West End production as well, since the playwrights liked the new song better.
* There's a schools version of ''Theatre/JosephAndTheAmazingTechnicolourDreamcoat'' in which "Poor, Poor Joseph" ends with him being thrown in jail because nobody will buy him as a slave, skipping Potiphar (and, more importantly, Potiphar's wife) entirely.
* When the cast of ''Theatre/BeMoreChill'' performed "More Than Survive" on ''Good Morning America,'' some lyrics needed to be changed. Instead of being uncomfortable all day because his porno won't load, Jeremy sings how he'll be ''preoccupied'' all day because his ''website'' won't load. Michael's "How was class / You look like ass" was, amusingly, changed to "How was gym / [[AmbiguouslyGay Girl, you look grim.]]" They also cut down about two-thirds of the song for time constraints.
* The 2016 revival of ''Theatre/{{Falsettos}}'', in being filmed for Creator/{{PBS}}, had a few instances of broadcast-unfriendly language in lyrics changed.
-->Cordelia: "You save lives and I save chicken fat"\\
"I can't fucking deal with that!" => "How am I s'posed to deal with that?"\\

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* The original published version of the song "You Can Drive A Person Crazy" from ''Theatre/{{Company}}'' altered the last word of "if a person was a fag" to "drag"; some singers use this. For the 1996 revival of the show, StephenSondheim rewrote the line and its complementary rhyme (which since then has been restored to the original version):

* In TheFifties, Ira Gershwin replaced all uses of "nigger" in ''PorgyAndBess'': about twenty, by his count. It's fortunate that the earlier stage version of ''Porgy'' has succumbed to AdaptationDisplacement, as it used the word considerably more often.

** The original cast album of ''Theatre/TheGoldenApple'' changes the line about Circe being "available for a fee."

* The original published version of the song "You Can Drive A Person Crazy" from ''{{Company}}'' altered the last word of "if a person was a fag" to "drag"; some singers use this. For the 1996 revival of the show, StephenSondheim rewrote the line and its complementary rhyme (which since then has been restored to the original version):

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** The original cast album of ''Theatre/CityOfAngels'' changes the end of the "Theme from 'City of Angels'" from "kiss your ass goodbye" to "kiss this world goodbye," though this may have been a stylistic revision since it was recorded in 1990. ([[ForgottenThemeTuneLyrics Neither of these is sung in the show]].)

* Some sexual allusions in ''Theatre/TheRiseAndFallOfTheCityOfMahagonny'' were censored in the original German production: the "love" scene no longer depicted a busy brothel, and a duet for Jim and Jenny was interpolated to compensate for the scene's abridgment. The lyrics of the recurring chorus which helps introduce that scene were changed to avoid use of the word "Liebesakt" (a common German term for sexual intercourse).

* The early Broadway run of ''{{Grease}}'' had much more profanity, including one of Sandy's final lines being "Nah, fuck it". After complaints were made about the language and after the film version rose in popularity, the Broadway script was gradually cleaned up to be more family-friendly. This also necessitated lyric changes to "Mooning" and "Greased' Lightnin'" (although the film had kept the original, raunchier lyrics of the latter).

* The school edition of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee changes the song My Unfortunate Erection to My Unfortunate Distraction, making the song about puberty in general rather than about his erection.

* Many productions of ''GuysAndDolls'' have the Hot Box dancers dressed in less {{Stripperific}} costumes.

* When musical ''SpringAwakening'' performed a medley at the Tony Awards, several lyrics to "The Bitch of Living" were changed to please CBS. Including, among others, "nothing but your hand" to "getting what you can" and "breasts" to "chest". The company then [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] the censorship in the "Totally Fucked" portion by [[FingerOnLips censoring themselves]] on the words "ass" and "fucked".
** However, when the show performed another medley on ''Good Morning America'', part of "Totally Fucked" was also performed, but this time with the phrase "totally fucked" changed to "totally stuck" and "kiss your sorry ass goodbye" as "kiss your sorry life goodbye".

* In all twentieth-century versions of ''StarlightExpress'', Ashley carried a pack of cigarettes and frequently mimed smoking them. The second U.S. tour made her a smoking car InNameOnly and heavily implied that she'd turned to promiscuous sex instead, which would be fine if it hadn't been presented in the sleaziest manner possible.

* At least one High School production of ''AChorusLine'' turned the song "Tits and Ass" into "This And That". Which, in a way, turned a song about stage titillation into a song about prostitution (!).

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