This chapter examines the adaptation of two stage plays to the screen during the ‘British New Wave’ period of the late 1950s and early 1960s. It locates these adaptations in relation to a specific national context, namely the symbiotic relationship between stage and screen in England. This began in the first decade of cinema when adaptations of theatre plays were seen as a means of raising the cultural status of film. The nearness of production centres and the exchange of personnel then helped to create a climate in which the exchange of practices and ideas was facilitated (Brown 1986). However this shared history is contentious as British cinema has been criticised for its overdependence on theatrical or literary source material and therefore the influence of the theatre has often been seen to be detrimental (Elsaesser 1972: Armes 1978). Criticism was particularly directed at stage-to-screen adaptations because of their shared identity as performance media. The ‘theatrical’ was understood to be in implicit opposition to the ‘cinematic’.

This chapter, on the other hand understands the stage-to-screen adaptation in more productive terms, arguing that the hybridity of these textual products had a specifically national dimension in the way they integrated theatrical and cinematic elements. As David Forrest argues, the theatrical antecedents of the British New Wave films distinguished them from other national cinematic movements of the time:

There is much to be gained from thinking about these films as stage adaptations and this challenges histories of the period, which can neglect the adaptive status of these films. The period in question has been looked at in detail by theatre scholars and by film scholars but has generated debates specific to these disciplines rather than cross-disciplinary investigations (Higson 1984: Hill 1986: Rebellato 1999).