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Just four of the many ways to stage Shakespeare's Richard III - Left to right, top to bottom: Traditional,note  Putting on the Reich style,note  Set amongst the Idle Rich of 2023 America,note  or A Mix of Stylesnote 

Theatrical Productions are ephemeral. Even if a production is recorded on film, the actual experience can never be exactly reproduced. This quality is arguably the quality, along with the live performance thereof, that distinguishes theatre from other forms of art. This is what enables plays to be performed dozens, hundreds, or thousands of different times.

So let's say you have a famous show that is always thought of as being performed or interpreted in a certain way. Then one day somebody decides to revive it, but with a big twist on the plot that changes the way the entire production is done. Congratulations, you've got yourself this trope, a large-scale defiance of Original Cast Precedent.

The German term is "Regietheater" (literally "direction theatre") and the trope forms an important part of German theatre culture.


Examples:

  • Assassins: The original production was off-Broadway at Playwright's Horizons. The Broadway production was the first time the idea of the Balladeer turning into Lee Harvey Oswald was implemented.
  • Bertolt Brecht: Modern performances of his plays almost demand this trope, to keep the audience alienized, as Brecht wanted it. Common tactics include the use of words projected onto a screen (one of Brecht's favourite tactics), having the actors protest their stage directions, having the actors switch roles halfway through, using minimalist sets, and name-checking Brecht. One memorable Berlin performance of "St. Joan" (in the Deutsches Theater) started out with four actors fighting over who got to play which character, all reading from cheap paperback copies of the play. Once they finally all managed to get a private part in the play, they found themselves stuck in the middle of a tragic plot, and desperately tried to stop being these characters again (with varying levels of success). Meanwhile, the actors and a miniature cardboard cityscape were filmed on live and projected onto a screen, with the SFX crew clearly visible, and as the plot got more dramatic, the floor disappeared from under the actors, slowly forcing them back towards the screen. On which a counter was displayed showing how many people had died of poverty and hunger worldwide during the performance of the play alone. Oh, and? It didn't change or add a single word from Brecht's original script.
  • La Cage aux folles: The acclaimed 2008 U.K. revival, which transferred to Broadway in 2010, is deliberately smaller-scale than the original Costume Porn and Scenery Porn-heavy 1983 Broadway staging that had become the precedent. This was something writers Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman had wanted for years; as Fierstein explains in the liner notes of the 2010 cast recording, "I wrote about a small drag club but what we've always given the audience was a full-blown Folies Bergere... I've witnessed a lot of productions focus more on the farce and less on the heart."
  • Chicago: The 2002 film version sets all but two of the musical numbers as part of Roxie's imagination.
  • Company: Over the years, Stephen Sondheim's play has undergone a transformation as to the concept behind the concept musical: in the original production, there was more of a focus on the show being a series of vignettes about married life, but later productions (particularly the 2006 Broadway Revival) interpret the text as a narrative about Bobby's isolation and inability to connect with people as his friends do.
  • Different interpretations of Duke Bluebeard's Castle are legendary, from a production where Judith's opening of the doors represents her journey to remember things lost to dementia, to a production where she's a private detective investigating Bluebeard.
  • The Elephant Man: A 2011 Los Angeles production of Bernard Pomerance's play chose to defy in-script instructions that the lead actor does not use any kind of makeup/costume to suggest his deformities (he must use body language and vocal distortion instead) in favor of outfitting the performer in an elaborate prosthetic suit.
  • Into the Woods: The Fiasco Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim's play depicts the story as told by a bunch of people using whatever they have, playing multiple roles.
  • Jesus Christ Superstar: One of the shows most prone to this. In particular, many stagings of the musical starting in The New '10s, including the 2018 NBC live version, have been based on the 2012 version, which was heavily informed by the Occupy Wall Street movement. As Schaffrillas Productions notes in his video Why Are Weird Musical Adaptations So Popular?:
    The best thing about JCS is how versatile the setting and tone can be, while still allowing the story to work. The message is that Jesus' story is timeless and you can tell it in any way imaginable. You want tanks rolling in the desert towards Judas? You got 'em! You want the priest to have these weird futuristic triangular wizard cloaks? Go for it! You want King Herod's song to be a live celebrity roast? That's basically what it is, so sure!
  • Les Misérables: The 2014 Dallas Theater Center production sets the show in contemporary times and played the revolution similar to police riots.
  • Oklahoma!: The 2019 Broadway Revival restages the show in modern times with a minimalist set and band and a greater emphasis on gun violence. It won the Tony for Best Musical Revival, with Ali Stroker also bagging Featured Actress in a Musical (the first wheelchair user to do so).
  • L'Orfeo: Various productions have used the show to meditate on the themes of grief, death, and love, particularly in ones that use a Setting Update to modern or semi-modern times.
    • David Bösch's 2014 production has Orpheus returning from the Underworld to find decades have passed, leaving open the idea that the Underworld trip didn't happen at all and he was wasting away grieving Eurydice, while also changing the ending to have Orpheus die with Eurydice instead of ascending to the stars.
    • Silvia Costa's 2023 production set the happy beginning in Underworld colors to focus on the melancholy of the piece and how happiness can be fleeting, hinting that the events are Orpheus futilely reliving his wedding day and Underworld trip in the hopes of changing what happened until Apollo either helps him cope or gives him a Mercy Kill with medicine.
  • "Der Parasit" ("The Parasite"): The Berliner Ensemble performance of Schiller's play re-enacts the whole play with actors in puppet outfits (with fake legs and fake arms, done with a sleeve connecting the wrists almost directly to the shoulder). One key character is played by a dozen different actors who pop out of boxes on the stage to chant his lines. The Queen is played by a man (Axel Werner). A comedic sound effect is played for every single action. Needless to say, the actual content of the play becomes moot.
  • RENT: In the script, Mark is the only character who is not specifically placed anywhere on the stage during "Without You" as Angel dies. Directors may place Mark at Collins' side during his hour of need, or set to the side, isolated from the rest of the cast. Either option has a drastic impact on Mark's character arc from then on.
  • William Shakespeare: Many, many, productions of any of his plays decide to take wildly different interpretations of the text. Given how standard the practice of cutting his plays is these days, it's not surprising.
    • Instead of painting his face black to play Othello, Patrick Stewart played the titular role in a racially inverted production, opposite an otherwise all-black cast. This was by all accounts one of the more unusual productions of the play in recent memory.
    • Macbeth:
      • One BBC television adaptation, which also happened to include Patrick Stewart in the title role in a setting based on Communist Russia during the time of Jospeh Stalin.
      • The 2013 Broadway production starring Alan Cumming. Set in a psychiatric ward, Cumming plays a deeply disturbed man who impersonates almost every character in the show, occasionally leaving clues as to who the patient is, why he is recounting this story, and what has led him to become so tortured. There are only two other actors, who portray doctors commenting on his madness.
    • Julius Caesar:
      • It's not uncommon for productions to have Romans dressed as Nazis or modern politicians.
      • In the 2011 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production, the only change was making Caesar a woman.
    • Steampunk Shakespeare is a thing.
    • There was an adaptation of Titus Andronicus that, in the end, revealed the setting to be an asylum and that all the characters were inmates.
    • The 2015 performance of The Merchant of Venice, by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Straford-upon-Avon itself, interpreted the love story as a polyamorous romance between Antonio, Bassanio, and Portia. None of the text was changed, but Antonio and Bassanio spent much of the play kissing and embracing, with Portia looking on happily. Some productions have told the story as a tragedy, with Shylock as the protagonist.
    • Julie Taymor directed a film of The Tempest where the major change was casting the great Helen Mirren as Prospera, the exiled sorceress hungry for revenge. The Renaissance setting was otherwise intact. Suddenly Prospera's whole arc is changed, from the reasons for her exile, to her relationship with her daughter, to what her future in Milan may look like (for one thing, Prospera gives up a great deal more freedom when she leaves the island).
  • Spring Awakening: The 2015 Deaf West Broadway Revival casts several deaf performers in the roles, making their characters deaf as a result. The deaf performers would sign while hearing actors (who also made up the band) voiced their dialogue and singing. The change really heightened the themes of miscommunication and alienation and changed some of the shows relationships. The biggest change is the show incorporating the policies for the deaf enacted in education at the time, such as forbidding sign language and forcing the students to speak. As a result, Moritz being intentionally flunked out of school is significantly harsher than the original as it seems like the teachers want to keep a deaf student out of the school and, in turn, their adoration of Melchior is because he can hear.
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:
    • The Turn of the Millennium revival of this Stephen Sondheim play (produced first in the U.K., then on Broadway) sets the whole thing in an insane asylum, drops the ensemble, and the remaining performers — the leads and supporting cast — play instruments when they aren't singing.
    • Meanwhile, the 2012 West End production with Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton gave it a Setting Update that places the show in the 1930s.
  • The Tales of Hoffmann: Some stagings downplay the Unintentional Period Piece elements in favor of more Surrealism, alter the Significant Double Casting to suit the ranges of the actors, and/or put new spins on the costuming.
  • True West: The 2000 Broadway staging is an interesting case. The two brothers were played by John C. Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman — and every few performances they would switch roles, allowing both of them to show off their versatility. They both earned well-deserved Tony nominations for Best Actor in a Play.
  • West Side Story: The 2020 Broadway Revival gave the show a Setting Update to the modern day, resulting in the Jets being portrayed as a mixed-race gang with several Black members (including Riff) and the Sharks becoming a Latino gang originating from several Latin America countries in addition to Puerto Rico.

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