25 Jul 2011 09:09:14
Burgess, who died in 1993, started working on a stage version of A Clockwork Orange a decade after Stanley Kubrick's controversial 1971 film adaptation. "The reason why Burgess wanted to make his own stage adaptation, quite a long time after Kubrick made the film, was to assert his ownership of the story," Dr Andrew Biswell, director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, told BBC News. Although the Royal Shakespeare Company premiered a production based on Burgess's script in 1990, his songs were replaced with compositions by U2's Bono and The Edge.
Despite his dark tale of delinquency, Burgess's songs aren't so grim. "It's pretty close to West Side Story," Biswell said. "That's one of the obvious influences." It's a sinister image: droogs snapping their fingers and singing about Maria. "There's this scene in prison, where one of the prisoners is kicked to death, which is throwaway and jolly," Biswell explained. "That's completely different from the corresponding episode in [Kubrick's] film, which is gloomy and depressing."
The Clockwork Orange songs will be performed by graduates of the Royal Northern College of Music to celebrate the novel's 50th anniversary. Other scheduled events include an academic conference, an exhibition on the film, and a new musical adaptation of the story, written by Ed DuRanté and composed by Fred Carl, which debuts at Stratford's Theatre Royal in September.
