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In a stage play, we see people pretending to be other people, but, in a video version, the people on screen seem like the people in a documentary.

The problem with television or movie versions is that, by their nature, they seem realistic, even if told from a fantasy point of view. These are people here in front of another set of people, the one group pretending to be someone else and the other suspending disbelief to pretend that the characters of the story are actually there in front of them. Unlike a television show or a movie, a play doesn’t purport to be realistic. Also important, I think, was that it was on stage with real human beings moving through the story. What worked with the Lifeline presentation was, first of all, that it was a top-notch production with a great amount of talent and gusto. I’ve written before about the difficulty of translating Terry Pratchett’s funny, witty, silly, insightful, wacky and clear-eyed novels into other art media.Ī year and a half ago, I saw a wonderfully entertaining version of Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment at Lifeline Theatre here in Chicago, but I’ve been underwhelmed by television and feature-length movie versions of several of his books.