Anastasia: stage vs screen

Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's 1997 animated film Anastasia, with Meg Ryan, John Cusack, and Kelsey Grammer, is a fairy tale about a lost Romanov princess. The Broadway musical, which opened in 2017 with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally, keeps the heart of the story but rebuilds the villain and the score. A 1956 film with Ingrid Bergman is also in the family tree. These are the main changes.

Stage

Broadway musical (2017)

Screen

Anastasia (1997), the animated film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, and Anastasia (1956), directed by Anatole Litvak

1. Rasputin and Bartok are gone

In the 1997 film, the villain is Rasputin, a sorcerer who sold his soul to destroy the Romanovs and commands demons, with a talking bat named Bartok as his comic sidekick. The musical cuts both. There is no magic on stage, and the story is told as a historical drama with romance and comedy, set in Russia and Paris.

2. Gleb, a Bolshevik officer, is the new threat

The stage show invents Gleb Vaganov, a Bolshevik general ordered to kill Anya if she proves to be Anastasia. He questions her early on, notices her "Romanov eyes," and lets her go with a warning. He then follows her to Paris, falls for her, and cannot carry out his orders. Gleb gets his own songs, including "The Neva Flows" and "Still," which give the villain a conscience the film's Rasputin never has.

3. Countess Lily replaces Sophie

The film's Sophie, the Dowager Empress's lady-in-waiting, voiced by Bernadette Peters, becomes Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch on stage. She is Vlad's former lover, and the two rekindle their romance in Paris. Lily gets the comic duet "The Countess and the Common Man" with Vlad, plus "Land of Yesterday" with the Russian exiles. Caroline O'Connor originated the role on Broadway.

4. Anya and Dmitry get new songs

Anya, Dmitry, and Vlad are still the central trio, and the con-man plot is intact, but the stage show adds music for them. Anya sings "In My Dreams" and "Crossing a Bridge," she and Dmitry share "My Petersburg" and "In a Crowd of Thousands," and Dmitry gets "Everything to Win." The film's "Learn to Do It" stays as a trio for Vlad, Anya, and Dmitry.

5. Six film songs stay and 16 are new

Director Darko Tresnjak said the musical keeps six songs from the film, among them "Journey to the Past," "Once Upon a December," and "Learn to Do It," and adds 16 new ones by the same writers. Flaherty and Ahrens also wrote the 1997 songs, and "Journey to the Past" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, so the new music is written in the same voice as the old.

6. A grounded Russia replaces a fairy tale

The film opens at a Romanov ball in 1916 and jumps ten years ahead to a Russia where Rasputin's magic and demons are real. The musical opens with a palace prologue, shows the Bolsheviks storming a Romanov ball in 1917, and spends its first act in 1927 Leningrad before moving to Paris. On the train out of Russia, police shoot Count Ipolitov and the trio flee on foot, a stretch with no counterpart in the film.

7. The ending drops the showdown with Rasputin

In the film, Anastasia crushes Rasputin's reliquary with help from her dog Pooka, Rasputin is destroyed, and she elopes with Dimitri after he turns down the reward. On stage, the Dowager Empress recognizes Anya by a lullaby and the music box, Anya gives up any royal claim at a press conference, Gleb cannot bring himself to kill her, and Anya and Dmitry leave Paris together.

8. The 1956 film is a drama with no songs

Anatole Litvak's 1956 film, starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes, is a drama with no songs. Arthur Laurents adapted it from Marcelle Maurette's 1952 play. It opens in 1928 Paris, where General Bounine coaches an amnesiac woman to pose as Anastasia and claim an inheritance. Bergman won the Oscar for Best Actress. The 1997 film drew on both the play and this film, and the musical builds on the 1997 film.

Anastasia movie vs musical: FAQs