The Overlook Hotel has spawned a film, a documentary, a prequel, a sequel and now an opera
By J.C.T.
IN 1974 an unpublished novelist checked in at the Hotel Stanley in Colorado with his wife. They were the only guests, and that night, Stephen King had quite a nightmare. By the next morning, a story about a haunted hotel, a struggling couple and their telepathic son was fleshed out in his mind. Three years later, the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel were immortalised in “The Shining”, which quickly became a bestseller and helped to solidify Mr King’s reputation as a horror writer.
The book has spawned a number of reworkings and spin-offs. Most famous is Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, with a documentary film, “Room 237” (2012), dedicated to interpreting it. Warner Bros., the studio that released the original film, is developing a prequel based on the prologue of the book (which was excised before publication). Even Mr King himself couldn’t resist, penning a sequel, “Doctor Sleep”, which chronicles young Danny Torrance’s life after his father’s breakdown. This month, the Torrance family and The Overlook Hotel have been brought to the stage of the Minnesota Opera. Yet despite all these versions, there are only two eminent visions of “The Shining”—those of Mr King and Kubrick—which differ not just in feel and detail, but in philosophy.
There are many small (but divisive) differences between the book and the film—such as the room number moving from 217 to 237. But one of the most significant rifts emerges in the characterisation of Jack Torrance. Kubrick paints Torrance as mad from the outset, with Wendy (played by Shelley Duvall) as a “sort of screaming dishrag”, according to Mr King. In the book, Jack is depicted more sympathetically, with his alcoholism forming a key part of the problems in the Torrance family and his hallucinations. It gives the story—and its chilling qualities—a convincing narrative axis; it comes as no surprise that Mr King found Kubrick’s film similar to a “big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it”.
The new opera, composed by Paul Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell, favours the Jack Torrance of the novel. Mr Moravec explained that they preferred the Jack of the book as “a three-dimensional, conflicted character. A decent guy trying to do the right thing.” The opera even expands upon Mr King’s backstory for Jack by enhancing the role of his abusive father, Mark Torrance—a character given only a cursory reference in the novel. Jack doesn’t have a traditional aria in the opera (that’s saved for his wife Wendy, who sings “I never stopped loving you”), but Brian Mulligan, a baritone, depicts Jack as an everyman. His extended vocal passages stress that he is fighting, rather than embracing, the demons of the Overlook Hotel—Mr Moravic’s score uses an effective mix of atonal shrieks and haunting echoes of big-band 1920s music.
The opera has opted for a colonial, Georgian-era décor for the Overlook Hotel rather than the Native-American themed interior of the film. And—thanks to video effects—the book’s original ending is faithfully rendered on stage, where Danny, Wendy and Dick Hallorann escape as Jack blows up the hotel. Kubrick chose a different ending for his film: an icy death for Jack rather than a cleansing fire. Wendy and Danny still escape (Old Dick Hallorann takes an axe in the chest, alas) but Jack doesn’t burn down the hotel. Rather, old photos suggest that he was at the hotel in 1921—implying that the horrors the hotel has witnessed (and wreaks on others) continue to be perpetrated. This change is partly due to the limitations of special effects in 1979. The meticulous Kubrick didn’t feel that he could do justice to the topiary garden of the book, with its menagerie of animals that come to life; his solution was to insert a sprawling hedge maze. This decision is plausible, but it seems unlikely that special effects (especially after the wizardry of “2001: A Space Odyssey”) would have been unable to stage a hotel burning down in winter.
Perhaps these changes came from a desire to make “The Shining” more than a “haunted house story”. Kubrick (and his co-screenwriter, Diane Johnson) added the idea that The Overlook was built on a Native American burial ground. And while many of the theories posited in “Room 237” are ridiculous—such as “The Shining” being Kubrick’s admission that he helped the American government stage the lunar landing, or that the addition of a maze makes it clear that it’s a retelling of the Theseus myth—the fact that The Overlook invites varied metaphors and meanings is a result of the film’s added potency.
Yet “The Shining” holds a special place in the pantheon of cinematic horror, even though little in the film is scary. Kubrick does not rely on the shadows and dark settings of early horror films such as “Nosferatu”. There are no showy displays of special effects as in Hitchcock’s “Psycho” or Friedkin’s “The Exorcist”. “The Shining” is a rare type of horror film: one that keeps the lights on. The moments that truly give viewers chills are of mundane things in full daylight; a kid riding a big-wheel, twin sisters holding hands, typed pages of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” These were all Kubrick’s additions.
The opera of “The Shining” has sold out, and the novel’s sequel “Doctor Sleep,” was a number-one bestseller in 2013. Warner Bros. announced last month that it, too, will be adapted for the big screen. “The Shining” lives on because it taps into something deep in the psyche. Whether it’s Mr King’s tortured Jack lurking in the basement, Kubrick’s eternally-crazed Jack roaming through the maze, or now Mr Moravec’s caretaker singing: “I am the husband, I am the father,” what we’re afraid of is not something hidden in shadows or that goes bump in the night—it’s our own minds.
