A New “Danish Girl” Sings Its Way to the Stage

 

A New “Danish Girl” Sings Its Way to the Stage

Broadway and the West End already know the name, Lili Elbe. Now they may be asked to listen.

Benson Drive Productions, led by CEO George Strus, has announced a new stage musical based on The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff’s best-selling novel and a New York Times “Notable Book.” The project brings together a creative team that signals both intention and care: a book and lyrics by Nora Brigid Monahan, an original score by Alex Parker, and direction by Georgie Rankcom. Its first private workshop begins this week.

That step matters. Workshops like this rarely make noise, but they decide what survives.

In a statement, Strus framed the musical as more than an adaptation. He called Ebershoff’s novel a work that helped shape queer literature, offering one of the earliest fictional accounts of gender-affirming surgery. The production, he said, aims to honor Lili Elbe’s life with a majority-trans creative team.

The timing is not subtle. As trans stories continue to face resistance across film and television, this project makes its position clear. It is not just telling a story. It insists on who gets to tell it.

Instead of following the path of the 2015 film, the musical returns to the novel’s quieter, more reflective core. The story is set inside a contemporary art gallery. A woman stands in front of the paintings of Gerda Wegener and Lili Elbe, trying to separate fact from interpretation. What begins as observation turns into something sharper: a question of legacy. What stays visible. What disappears. And who decides?

When The Danish Girl was first published in 2000, it quickly found an audience and was later named a New York Times “Notable Book.” Fifteen years later, it reached a wider public through the film adaptation starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, which went on to win an Academy Award. The musical becomes the next version of that story—one that trades the distance of a screen for the immediacy of a stage.

For now, the work remains inside a private room. No audience. No reviews. Just a team testing what holds.

But if it lands, Lili Elbe’s story will move again—off the canvas, off the page, off the screen—and into a space where the audience has to sit with it, together, in real time.