Author Jodi Picoult stages The Book Thief musical as a ‘cautionary tale’
US author Jodi Picoult says Broadway wouldn’t stage her new musical version of Markus Zusak’s beloved novel The Book Thief. So it his having its world premiere in Bolton instead.
For years, Picoult has watched her books be adapted for the stage and screen by other people, not always with happy results.
So she felt some extra responsibility after Zusak agreed to let her turn his 2005 bestseller about a young girl in Nazi Germany into a theatre musical.
“Part of what I said to Markus, when I was pitching him this idea is, ‘Look, I just went through this process with my own work,'” she says. “‘I will take care of your baby, because I know what it feels like.’
“And because of that, I feel like I have an added responsibility to be true to the story and the message and the emotions that he created in his beautiful novel.”
She adds: “There is no small part of me that is terrified because he’s flying here from Australia to see the production.”
Picoult has made a long journey herself, temporarily relocating from New Hampshire to Bolton, Greater Manchester, for rehearsals and the show’s opening this week.
She made her name by writing almost 30 novels, the last dozen of which have gone in at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Five have been made into movies, with four more in development.
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