Mrs Doubtfire The Musical Differences From the Movie

When a movie gets adapted for the stage, it is common for there to be alterations from the original. Some of these will be because of logistics or budget, and others will be to update certain story aspects to be more modern. Mrs Doubtfire is the beloved Robin Williams comedy from 1993, and it got a musical adaptation which debuted 26 years after the film.

Here at Xstreamed.tv I like to tackle every stage adaptation of a movie I come across and highlight all the changes and differences I can spot between the stage and screen, and give my view on if the changes were necessary and if they were an improvement.

So, let’s get on with it!

• As the show begins, Daniel (who was Robin William’s character) is reading the voice over that gives pre-show information about turning your phone off and no photography etc etc. He’s reading this announcement as if it is the job he is doing as an actor, which is the character’s profession. This replaces Daniel recording a voice over for a Looney Tunes style cartoon bird. In the movie the cartoon character is smoking and Daniel refuses to condone this in a kids cartoon, and this leads to him getting fired. In the musical, Daniel just wants to play around with the announcement voice over and this leads to him getting fired.
• Truthfully, the version in the movie makes more sense for the character to show his morals and that he cares about children, but the musical using Daniel being a voice over actor to do the pre-show announcement is very clever as well.

• Also of note is that Chris, Lydia and Natalie are the only children at the party as all the other cast are played by adults.
• Daniel throws a birthday party for his and Miranda’s son Chris in both versions. In both Daniel throws a big elaborate party which upsets Miranda and leads to them getting a divorce, but there are differences. In the movie Daniel has hired a bunch of farm yard animals like a goat, a horse and a donkey to be at the party, but on stage this is impractical. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is instead that a stripper turns up, but is not what Daniel was expecting.
• Daniel now hacks Miranda’s email to change the advert she is placing to find a housekeeper/nanny. He’s able to do this as he knows her password. This is instead of Daniel being handed a physical form with the advert written out in the movie. Daniel then used a pen to change a couple of numbers on the physical written so that no one would be able to call and apply for the nanny job.
• This works well as the whole story is modernised to make use of modern technology, and there’s no way Miranda would be doing this by hand when the internet exists as it does these days. This does make Daniel’s actions a bigger violation of trust to hack her email compared to just turning a 3 into an 8.

• Uncle Frank is now a significantly bigger role, and his partner Andre is also a prominently featured character. I’m not sure if Andre was a character in the film, although there is one sequence where Frank has someone work with him to help create the Mrs Doubtfire disguise. My assumption is that Andre is a development on this character who otherwise is not in the musical.
• Frank and Andre have a new plot thread where they are looking to adopt a child.
• Uncle Frank now has a quirk where he shouts whenever he lies because he is nervous of getting caught.
• When Daniel demonstrates that he does voices as his skill set he does modern characters such as Homer Simpson, who could have been done at the time as the Simpsons was around and big at the time, but wasn’t done in the movie. As a bonus fun fact, Robin Williams was replaced by the voice of Homer Simpson as Genie in the first Aladdin sequel and TV show. Other voices Daniel does include Peter Griffin, Boris Johnson and Prince Harry.
• The story is modernised so the children now have tablets and laptops. This means that when Mrs Doubtfire takes these away so they can do their homework it makes little sense as surely these devices would be what they would do their homework on.
• Chris also has his uncle’s quirk of shouting when he lies. This only happens in act 2, and truthfully doesn’t always work, but is a fun character trait to build out the Chris character and connect him to his uncle.
• In the scene where Daniel is visited by the social worker Mrs Sellner Daniel now loses both the wig and the mask out the window instead of just the mask.
• Also, in this scene when Daniel is trying to hide that he has lost his mask, he now puts several things in front of his face to hide that he is Daniel before finally putting her face in the cream pie. This just draws out this sequence and in my opinion was worse than the original.
• The social worker Mrs Sellner insists on interviewing Mrs Doubtfire as part of her assessment of if Daniel can visit the kids more. This doesn’t happen in the film, and doesn’t make sense. A social worker couldn’t insist that someone not directly involved in the case be interviewed as part of the decision.
• Uncle Frank and Andre bring an extra wig to Daniel during the same time as the social worker visits. This is just about an excuse for them to be present in a scene where they are otherwise unneeded.
• Miranda is no longer an architect but is instead a fashion designer with a company called M Power. I’d argue this was a change for the worse as the fashion industry is creative and also something of a high risk just as acting is. It makes less sense that Miranda wouldn’t be more understanding of Daniel if she was now more of a creative and arty than she was in the movie.
• Mrs Doubtfire is roped into modelling some of the plus sized clothes designed by Miranda for her M Power.
• The bus driver from the movie who fancies Mrs Doubtfire is not in the musical version.
• Mr Lundy the TV boss at the station where Daniel works as a janitor is now a female character called Janet Lundy.
• It’s less explicit that Chris walks in on Daniel using the toilet and is seen peeing stood up for the discovery by Chris and Lydia that Mrs Doubtfire is a man. Daniel says about wanting to get out of his Mrs Doubtfire disguise because he’s hot or it itches. He now has his mask half off rather than his knickers down…
• The famous line ‘Help is on the way dears’ is said much earlier as Daniel no longer has to help Stu who no longer chokes towards the end of the story.
• Daniel no longer puts shellfish in Stu’s food to spite him. Stu therefore no longer chokes at the end and needs the Heimlich manoeuvre. This lead to Daniel’s Mrs Doubtfire mask being damaged in the film, and doesn’t happen on stage.
• Instead, the restaurant scene which leads to the climax of everyone finding out that Daniel is actually Mrs Doubtfire is handled differently. There is a prominent Flamenco singer and dancer who performs throughout the scene and is used to provide cover for quick changes that Daniel has to go as he splits his time in the restaurant as both himself for a job interview and as Mrs Doubtfire for Miranda’s birthday party. Frank and Andre are also present to help with the quick changes which didn’t happen in the movie.
• Instead of Stu choking Mrs Doubtfire ends up getting involved in the Flamenco dance and the mask and costume get knocked off.

• Miranda ends up with Stu at the end of the story which wasn’t said to have happened in the movie. After the restaurant scene we don’t see Stu again, but the musical gives her this happy ending which also spells the end of any chance of Miranda and Daniel getting back together. They didn’t reunite in the film, but with a better relationship between the two at the end it could give audiences hope they would patch things up.
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