You could have a narrative without dialogue, although that would take considerable effort. Especially in light of the idiom of “show; don’t tell,” the writer would have to explain the interaction between characters rather than show it through the dialogue of the characters. A play, on the other hand, would be near impossible without dialogue. In a peculiar twist, however, a play with little or no dialogue would, by necessity, be very heavy on showing instead of telling because of the visual medium in which it unfolds.
Every story takes place in a setting. In a narrative text, the writer has to set the scene. Some writers, such as Ivan Turgenev, are masters at the details that create rich settings in readers’ imaginations. Playwrights, on the other hand, are at the mercy of set designers. As such, they often give basic perfunctory setting cues, so the set designer has something with which to begin.
The actions of characters in a narrative text are completely at the mercy of the writer. The way a character crosses a room, puts out a cigarette or tussles with another character can vary greatly from writer to writer or even from scene to scene. While a playwright can give cues as to how actions are to be carried out, the performance aspect of a play puts the action at the mercy of directors and actors. Indeed, it is this very aspect of plays that may warrant such wide criticism of the translation of narratives to plays.
If English professor Marshall McLuhan was right and the medium really is the message, then the differences between narrative text and a play could not be more obvious. In the purest form of artistic expression, it can be argued, only one medium can deliver the truest form of the message. As such, although both a narrative text and a play can present a story, only one medium can present the message in its truest form, because the content itself is secondary to the structure in which it is presented.