Performing Arts

LONDON, England — Scarlett O'Hara: Southern belle; feminist icon; West End star.

And the music swells: Darius Danesh and Jill Paice play Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With the Wind.

The vain, feisty heroine of Gone With the Wind comes to life in a musical stage adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's Civil War saga that opens Tuesday in London.

Directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Jill Paice as Scarlett and Darius Danesh as Rhett Butler, the show has a big budget, a big cast, big ambitions — and, if you believe the rumors, big problems.

Gone With the Wind is the latest attempt to make musical theater from a much-loved literary work, following triumphs such as Les Miserables and troubled productions like The Lord of the Rings . It has book, music and lyrics by Margaret Martin, a Los Angeles-based writer with a doctorate in public health who has never before had a play produced professionally. But if she is worried, she doesn't show it.

Martin, 54, is a former teenage single mother who returned to college in her 30s and emerged a decade later with a Ph.D. in community health science and a desire to do "the most fun thing I could think of doing" — write a stage musical.

The fact that she had no experience in professional theater did not daunt her.

"I thought, 'What story does everyone know in America?"' Martin said. "And when Gone With the Wind came into my mind, I never thought I wouldn't be doing it. The only question I had was the rights," she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

After spending two years writing the play and recording demos of songs, Martin managed to persuade Mitchell's estate to let her have the rights to the story. She persuaded Nunn — whose credits range from Cats to an acclaimed production of King Lear starring Ian McKellen — to direct after reading that he had an interest in U.S. history. Whatever critics say after opening night, it's an impressive achievement.

Millions know Gone With the Wind from the 1939 film that starred Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Clark Gable as Rhett. An epic tale of love, war and its aftermath, filmed in glorious Technicolor, it smashed box-office records, won 10 Academy Awards and remains one of the best-loved films of all time.

Martin said she stuck more closely to Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, finding many modern-day resonances in its portrait of the 19th-century South — not least the inclusion of "that organization of American terrorists," the Ku Klux Klan.

"The film reflected Depression-era values and completely ignored many things in the novel," Martin said.

In the movie, Scarlett is portrayed as spoiled and self-involved, Martin said. "But I see Scarlett O'Hara as a stressed-out teenage single mum who assumes responsibility for the survival of a large extended family under horrific circumstances."

Martin called Scarlett one of the first feminists in American literature. "She is madly heroic in all she does," she said. "Her experience, I think, will resonate with any woman."

The production has had a rocky ride to Tuesday's opening at the New London Theatre. Audiences at early previews reported a 4-hour running time that left some audience members rushing to catch the last trains and subways home. Two previews were canceled as cast and crew whittled the show down to a more manageable 3 1/2 hours. Critic Mark Shenton wrote on his blog that at the preview he attended, a stage manager emerged before the show and "respectfully asked audience (members) to leave as discreetly as possible if they had to go early, to avoid distracting the actors."

Paice, who played Laura Fairlie in Nunn's production of The Woman in White in London and on Broadway, has called working on the musical "completely intimidating, but also thrilling."

Novels have often had an uneasy transition to the stage. Les Miserables, adapted from Victor Hugo's novel of crime and punishment, has been running in London for more than 20 years and has been produced around the world. But The Lord of the Rings, a $25 million adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy saga, opened in Toronto in March 2006 to lukewarm reviews and closed six months later. A trimmed and reworked version opened in London last year. It is due to close in July after 13 months.

A previous attempt to turn Gone With the Wind into a musical, Scarlett, opened in Tokyo in 1970 and came to London in 1972. But a planned Broadway run was canceled after poor reviews of a Los Angeles run, and the show has not been staged in 30 years.

Martin is undaunted.

"It has just been a completely joyful process," she said. "I've learned a lot, but at the same time it's been a very collaborative process."

Associated Press