‘Ghost the Musical’ concludes national tour with Vegas stop

After all, “I thought how difficult it was,” he says — especially when he thought about friends whose musical adaptations “hadn’t done well.”

Although transforming a movie into a stage musical may seem like a no-brainer, for every Tony-winning success — think “Kinky Boots,” “Hairspray,” “Billy Elliot” or “Once” — there’s a “Rocky,” a “Bridges of Madison County,” a “Bullets Over Broadway.” (To cite a trio of recent — and recently closed — screen-to-stage adaptations.)

Once “Ghost the Musical” materialized, however, so did audiences. If not on Broadway (where, following its British debut, the show closed after a five-month 2012 run), then on the road during the show’s national tour, which makes the final stop of an almost yearlong trek with an eight-performance run starting Tuesday at The Smith Center.

“It took a long time to think that it was worthwhile,” Rubin says of a “Ghost” stage musical, but after “a number of producers” who “started trying to sell me on it,” the writer started buying.

“I don’t think I knew how to do it,” but once “I started to see how the songs would go, Broadway kind of seeped into my psyche,” he acknowledges. “I was innocent enough, or ignorant enough, to do it.”

One thing Rubin did know: “Ghost the Musical” needed a musical score capable of conveying the kind of lump-in-the-throat emotion generated on screen by dialogue exchanges between — and close-ups of — stars Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.

“We had to find composer-lyricists” who would “understand the characters and their motivations,” says Rubin, who adapted his screenplay for the stage.

After meeting with several candidates who “didn’t understand the world of ghosts and the cosmology of the show,” and whose “songs did not reflect the characters I knew,” Rubin said, “ ‘I could do this,’ ” and wrote lyrics for about 20 songs. “I had the DNA that belonged to the show.”

Those lyrics, in turn, helped multiple Grammy-winners Dave Stewart (formerly of the Eurythmics) and Glen Ballard (who’s worked with everyone from Michael Jackson to Alanis Morissette, Christina Aguilera and Dave Matthews) create the show’s original pop score. (Never fear, “Ghost the Musical” still includes “Unchained Melody,” the 1955 Alex North ballad the Righteous Brothers put on the charts twice — once in 1965, and again in 1990, when the original “Ghost” made it a hit all over again.)

Once Stewart and Ballard signed on to “Ghost the Musical,” the team was “thrilled to have (Rubin) along as the god of his movie universe,” Ballard notes in a separate telephone interview. But “the first thing I said was, ‘How do we do it?’ ”

In Ballard’s view,“it’s not the most natural thing to put on stage,” he says. “I loved the movie — but we couldn’t just put the movie on stage.” Trying to do that ranks as “a fatal misjudgment,” Ballard adds. Instead, their goal was to capture “the essence and spirit of what makes the movie work.”

To that end, Rubin and the Stewart-Ballard team worked with Tony-winning director Matthew Warchus (“God of Carnage,” “Matilda the Musical”), writing — and rewriting — “until we got it the way it worked for him,” according to Ballard.

The songwriters also used Rubin’s lyrics “kind of like deep background for each character and their intentions,” Ballard explains. “In the movie, you see actors do certain things,” but in the musical, the lyrics provide “a way to see into their subconscious, into their secret intentions.”

Some of Rubin’s lyrics remain, but Stewart and Ballard tried to make them “a little less on the nose, and more poetical,” according to the songwriter, who says he and his collaborator were searching for “the one phrase that will equal 10 lines — the one line that tells everything.”

Getting the movie onto the musical stage took about a year of development, leading up to the London production, with Warchus helping to shape the “very heavily plotted show,” Rubin recalls. The movie ran about two hours and “the show is about two hours and 15 minutes —with 17 songs in it. It moves along at an amazingly successful pace.”

As for that plot, if you’ve seen “Ghost” the movie you already know “Ghost the Musical’s” tale, which centers on the life — and afterlife — of a young couple separated by one partner’s untimely death.

Banker Sam Wheat (played by Steven Grant Douglas) and sculptor Molly Jensen (Kate Postotnik) seem inseparable — until Sam dies following an apparent mugging. But Sam knows it wasn’t just any mugging — and that Molly’s in danger. Trouble is, he’s trapped in the afterlife and can’t communicate with her. That is, until he finds psychic Oda Mae Brown (Carla R. Stewart) to serve as a go-between.

On stage, elaborate effects power “Ghost’s” frequent shifts between this life and the afterlife, thanks in part to illusions devised by award-winning stage and screen veteran Paul Kieve, whose credits range from “Pippin” and “Matilda the Musical” on Broadway to the “Harry Potter” movies.

“Audiences love the magic and the illusions,” according to Rubin, who says the touring version captures about “90 percent” of what Broadway audiences saw. For example, when Sam walks through a door, “it’s not a movie moment, it’s a real moment,” he says, praising the show’s “phenomenal stagecraft.”

Even with phenomenal stagecraft, however, “you still have to honor the original and grow it into something it wasn’t before,” Ballard notes, calling the process “a blessing and a challenge.”

Increasingly, however, that’s precisely the challenge associated with bringing a musical — even one based on a beloved movie — to Broadway.

“Let’s be honest,” Ballard says. “Everyone recognizes that, in these crowded times, there’s so much content in the marketplace, anything that’s familiar” has a built-in advantage. (Ballard’s now at work on another movie-based stage musical: “Back to the Future.”)

Besides, as Rubin reasons, “a story’s a story. In the old days, stories were told over and over again.”

And in “Ghost’s” case, it’s a story audiences seem to love.

Those who have seen the movie are “thrilled to see the reiteration and find it so engaging,” Rubin says, while those who “have never seen the movie are even more thrilled, because the story is a new story” to them.

“I’m as amazed as anyone — amazed and delighted,” the writer says of “Ghost’s” continuing appeal, on screen and now on stage. “When there’s a story that speaks to your heart and soul, there’s a gratitude” from audiences eager to embrace something that speaks to “who we are, what we are, why we are what we are and where we’re headed.”

After all, “we live in endless mystery,” Rubin concludes. “Humans are such fascinating creatures — at least to ourselves.”

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.