STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

A much-loved movie is now going onstage. The low-budget Irish independent film "Once" came out in 2007. It won an Oscar and a devoted following. The Web site Rotten Tomatoes, where people rate films, gives it a 97 percent rating. Now, "Once" has been adapted as an off-Broadway musical. It gives people a chance to revisit the story of two musicians in Dublin who meet, write songs together and fall in love.

Jeff Lunden reports.

JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: "Once," the movie was kind of the little engine that could. Made on a shoestring in Dublin, it starred songwriters Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, playing thinly veiled versions of themselves. And it was as much about the love of making music as it was about the budding, but unfulfilled, love between the two central characters.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALLING SLOWLY")

GLEN HANSARD AND MARKETA IRGLOVA: (Singing) I don't know you I don't know you but I want you, all the more for that. And words fall through me and always fool me. And I can't react...

LUNDEN: With a soundtrack filled with attractive contemporary folk music, the film became a cult hit, grossing $20 million worldwide and this song, "Falling Slowly," won the Academy Award for Irglová and Hansard.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALLING SLOWLY")

IRGLOVA: (Singing) Take this sinking boat and point it home. We've still got time...

GLEN HANSARD: This is amazing. What are we doing here? This is mad. We made this film two years ago. We shot on two handy-cams. It took us three weeks to make. We made it for a hundred grand. We never thought we'd ever come into a room like this and be in front of you people.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

HANSARD: It's been an amazing thing. Thanks for taking this film seriously, all of you. It means a lot to us. Thanks to the Academy, thanks to all the people who've helped us; they know who they are, we don't need to say them. This is amazing. Make art. Make art. Yeah, thanks.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)

LUNDEN: Now, an entirely different team of collaborators is making art with the songs and story from the film. Director John Tiffany and choreographer Stephen Hoggett, who created "Black Watch," an indelible theater piece about a Scottish regiment in Iraq, are helming the show.

It's being adapted by award-winning Irish playwright Enda Walsh. Walsh says the challenge was to take a delicate little story about an Irish busker and a Czech immigrant, and create something more robust for the stage.

ENDA WALSH: Our sensibilities were always to retain the heart of the piece. But, you know, it needs a language and it needs a more, sort of, physical narrative to sort of exist onstage. Because if you were to place that onstage, it just, it would evaporate. We know that, as theater makers.

LUNDEN: What Walsh and his collaborators have done is not only to reinforce plot points and build up characters who barely register in the film, but to suffuse the story with music making. All 13 actors play instruments – some more than one – and all are onstage for the entire show.

It's kind of a big Irish hootenanny, set in a working bar. The audience can buy a pint before the show and during intermission. And songs are used in an unconventional way, to tell the story.

Director John Tiffany calls "Once "a song sung in a pub.

JOHN TIFFANY: Well, it's a play about music. It's a piece of theater about the healing power of music. And we don't really ever have that moment where somebody - supposedly in a realistic, naturalistic setting - suddenly burst into song because, as the audience come in, everybody's singing. So, that's the vocabulary. That's the world that we're in.

LUNDEN: Steve Kazee plays the role Glen Hansard played in the film, known only as The Guy. He says having the cast onstage accompanying the songs is a powerful experience.

STEVE KAZEE: I don't know. It's a really beautiful thing to be part of; to sort of be onstage and be wrapped up inside of that swell of, like, an ensemble full of musicians and singers.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALLING SLOWLY")

STEVE KAZEE AND CRISTIN MILIOTTI: (Singing) Take this sinking boat and...

LUNDEN: Kazee says the musical has more dramatic thrust than the film, which he loves.

KAZEE: In the film, it's more about two people who meet, they fall in love and they have this thing for a week. In our show, it's about a guy who's broken – really broken – and a girl who's broken, and find a way to heal themselves through each other.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALLING SLOWLY")

MILIOTTI: (Singing) You had a choice. You've made it now. Falling...

LUNDEN: Cristin Miliotti plays the girl. She says the moment where the two characters really connect is in a music shop, where they sing "Falling Slowly."

CRISTIN MILIOTTI: Like when you first meet someone and you know something is there, but you're both, like learning each other's language. And then you find out, we can both speak music. And that's like when it, humph, takes off.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALLING SLOWLY")

MILIOTTI: (Singing) Raise your hopeful voice. You had a choice. You've...

LUNDEN: Enda Walsh says, for him, the girl's character is the heart of the show. She's the one who pushes the guy and the other characters to pursue their musical dreams.

WALSH: Her character sort of barely existed onscreen. But, for me, was all about the light, was all about someone who could change your world and change your life immediately. And yet, this sort of maelstrom of sort of emotion that goes on with her. You don't know actually what is all of her story.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONCE")

MILIOTTI: (Singing) When I get really lonely and the distance causes only silence. I think of you smiling with pride in your eyes, a lover that sighs. If you want me, satisfy me...

LUNDEN: Walsh says, when he was called for this project, he had never even seen the movie.

WALSH: I watched it and I thought, all right. This is "It's A Wonderful Life," effectively. It's sort of the, you know, the story of a guy who's sort of given up on stuff and this sort of angel arrives in and casts a light over his life somehow, and the people around him.

LUNDEN: "Once" opens tonight, at the New York Theatre Workshop, Off-Broadway. If all goes well, it could follow another show which started on the very same stage, "Rent," to Broadway.

For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN YOUR MIND'S MADE UP")

INSKEEP: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

And I'm Linda Wertheimer.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN YOUR MIND'S MADE UP")

IRGLOVA: (Singing) If you want something and you call, call, then I'll come running. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.