class=”aligncenter size-medium wp-image-215295″ alt=”dirtyrottenuk” src=”https://www.heyuguys.com/images/2014/04/dirtyrottenuk-585×300.png” width=”585″ height=”300″ />Taking successful stage productions and bringing them to the big screen has spawned a variety of accolades and success across the years. Oscar winners ranging from Casablanca, to West Side Story, and from My Fair Lady to The Sound of Music, all the way to Chicago – it’s a common stomping ground for filmmakers to explore.

But how about the other way around? To see many of our favourite films re-imagined on the stage is becoming something of a regularity – and with the quite brilliant adaptation of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which has just opened in London’s West End – it seems to be an enlightening, triumphant process, which could well pave the way for many others to appear.

Originally, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a successful comedy feature, directed by Frank Oz and starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin in the lead roles. Now, Jerry Mitchell is at the helm, having choreographed the popular Broadway run back in 2005. The songs are catchy, the suits are suave and the performances so effortlessly charismatic. Robert Lindsay shines at the protagonist Lawrence, portraying that perfect blend of charm and sophistication, with a clumsy, feeble edge that makes for a fine comic creation. Rufus Hound stars opposite as Freddy, and while not exactly who you would have in mind to play an American conman, he turns in a more than commendable performance.

It’s simply good fun, and unrelenting in such an approach, doing nothing but entertain for the entirety of the production, which is hilariously self-referential and meta on occasion, too. It’s not the first film to have made this leap to the stage with such ease either, as also showing in the theatres at the moment are the likes of Once, The Bodyguard, Fatal Attraction and Billy Elliot, to name just a few.

There are also many plays showing at present which are not based primarily on a film as such (but on pieces of literature being the source material), that needed the success and popularity of the film versions to warrant a run on stage. Such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (directed by Sam Mendes – to further blur the line between the two art-forms), and The Lion King (based on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet). Even the likes of Strangers of a Train, which had a wonderful run in the West End recently, managing to replicate the black and white film noir of the silver screen, and creating something quite spectacular on stage, in one of the most intrinsically cinematic stage plays of recent years.

Meanwhile, Let the Right One In – which originates from the eponymous 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist and made famous in the Swedish cinematic production, and then American remake (entitled “Let Me In”), has also just opened. However regrettably the latter is an example of when a production struggles to quite make that same impact on stage, and fails to capture that brooding, chilling ambiance that both films had in abundance.

Nonetheless, the underwhelming productions are vastly outnumbered by the overwhelming, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels epitomises that notion, as very much a member of the latter category.  Particularly impressive is the introduction of songs, otherwise missing from the original picture. It gives us hope that other plays in the pipeline, such as Back to the Future (set for a West End run next year) will not be carelessly stepping on treasured ground, but embellishing it for our viewing pleasure. In that instance, if the songs are half as good as the story, we’ll be on to a winner.