IT LASTED a mere 100 minutes but launched an industry that continues to endure after almost 25 years. The Wicker Man film inspired an American remake, several books, an academic conference, and now a West End musical.
The dark tale of paganism, loose morals and murder in the Highlands is set to take on spectaculars such as The Phantom Of The Opera and Les Miserables.
Workshop sessions – the step before full rehearsals – start on the new version in London tomorr
ow and will, in an unusual twist, include award-winning Scottish actress Lesley Mackie, who played a schoolgirl in the original film. It was her very first role.
Discussions have already taken place with Scottish theatres to preview the musical early next year ahead of a West End opening.
"Although it's a brilliant film, it is inherently theatrical," said Andrew Steggall, who at 28 has been hailed as one of Britain's most promising young theatre directors and producers.
"The key ingredients are music, played by people who are in the story, and a sense of ritual. The Wicker Man would be a rich piece of theatre."
The film culminates with the burning of a huge wicker man figure, which will be a high point in the stage version too, although Steggall refuses to reveal exactly how he will recreate the scene in a theatre.
The Wicker Man will be joining a growing number of films that have been successfully adapted for the stage in recent years. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins and Billy Elliot have been big hits in the West End and on Broadway.
The original film was shot at various locations in the west of Scotland in 1971. Edward Woodward played an uptight police sergeant who flies to a remote island to investigate the disappearance of a local girl.
He finds a strange, pagan community and is shocked by their loose moral and sexual standards. Christopher Lee played the local lord and the curiously international cast included Britt Ekland and Ingrid Pitt.
But the major cinema chains turned the film down and it was finally shown in 1974 as the bottom half of a double bill. It acquired a new lease of life on video and DVD and is now acknowledged as a classic.
A 2006 remake relocated the story in the US, but was a critical and commercial flop.
"I was late to The Wicker Man," said Steggall, who attracted international attention two years ago when he went to Iraq to recruit actors for a production of The Soldier's Tale at London's Old Vic.
It was not long after that production that he saw The Wicker Man for the first time and added it to his ambitious and diverse list of projects.
"I was immediately struck by its theatricality," he said. "It seemed to me that The Wicker Man would be a rich piece of theatre."
Although few would think of it as a musical, the film features more than a dozen songs. The late Paul Giovanni borrowed from Robert Burns, folk songs and even nursery rhymes, as well as composing original music himself.
The contrast between the jolly songs and the islanders' sinister intent is chilling. But plans for a soundtrack album were shelved as a result of the film's release problems.
A soundtrack finally came out in 1998. Another version appeared four years later and includes the missing 'Willow's Song', which Britt Ekland "sings" during her famous nude dance, although both her bare bottom and her voice belonged to other people.
Steggall has been working with Robin Hardy, the film's director, and Gary Carpenter, its associate musical director. He intends to use all the songs from the film and promises a few surprises as well.
At the workshop sessions Mackie will revisit the story where her career began, playing the mother of the child whose disappearance prompts the police officer's visit, and she may well play that role in the musical itself.
"It's quite extraordinary what has happened to The Wicker Man," she said. "It was my first job all those years ago, and it was a tiny little part as the chubby schoolgirl with the beetle."
She has it tied to a piece of string in class, much to the disgust of Woodward's character.
