Hits and misses
A best-selling novel often gets a second or third successful life when it is adapted into a movie or stage play. Novels are a rich source of material for the stage and the screen. Yet adapting a novel does not always guarantee success in its new format. It can be a challenge to translate a story from one medium into another in an equally successful manner.
Adapting the Cuckoo
Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of those rare books that have managed to make the move successfully to both the theatre and the cinema. Fans of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest all have their own favourite version of the story, be it the original novel, the later film or the stage adaptation.
Kesey wrote the novel after working as an orderly in a mental hospital in California. The book quickly caught on with readers who wanted an entertaining yet thought-provoking read.
A year after its publication, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest opened as a stage play in New York to excellent reviews. Since then, the play has been staged many times in the US and in Britain.