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Mar. 20th, 2013 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsYou might think innerbrat and I would have learned our lesson by now about comic book musicals.
If so, YOU WOULD THINK WRONG.
This time we draggedaberration to see a special this-week-only production of that work of sixties theatrical genius, It's A Bird . . . It's A Plane . . . It's Superman!
The fun started when we looked at the cast list and realized that the actor who played Superman had previously starred in Beauty and the Beast . . . and not, for the record, as Beauty, or the Beast. So, for the rest of this recap, I want you to imagine Superman bursting into every scene a la Gaston. No one's neck is incredibly thick as Clark Kent's!
However, the show does not begin with Superman! It begins with a bunch of generic villains and one poor doomed police officer, who gets shot in the chest twice.
POLICE OFFICER: It's a bird! It's a plane! It's . . . *EXPIRES*
Cue: CARDBOARD CUTOUT SUPERMAN
You have to understand that Cardboard Superman is basically the star of the show. Like, every time Superman has to fly, he just kind of dives off into the wings, and then CARDBOARD CUTOUT SUPERMAN soars through the backdrop while various cast members ooh and ahh, and IT'S AMAZING and we all fell over laughing every time.
Anyway, Cardboard Superman catches up with the bad guys and then he comes back as Gaston Superman and sings a song about how his job is to be a giant boy scout.
GASTON SUPERMAN: The people need me!
THE PEOPLE: We need you!
LOIS LANE: I need him!
Yes, Lois Lane is here, and in love with Superman, and SUPER ANNOYED about it. She rants all about it to Clark Kent, who spends the whole time looking awkward and uncomfortable, as well he might.
Other people who are annoyed about Superman: Max Mencken, Evil Theater Critic Slash Gossip Columnist!
MAX MENCKEN: Man, if Superman weren't around, my gossip columns would totally make the front page EVERY DAY! But now instead we have to have all this news crap. WHATEVER.
UNAPPRECIATED SECRETARY SYDNEY: Max, you are giant tool.
MAX MENCKEN: I know, honey. I know.
BUT HOLD THE PHONE on all these newspaper shenanigans! Enter: A MAD SCIENTIST! Who would like everyone to know that his nuclear reactor is about to explode and maybe Superman could lend a hand with that?
Clark Kent dives off into a phone booth (much to the irritation of a construction worker lady who was trying to use that phone booth, JEEZ) and then he and Lois run off to the power reactor. Clark and the Mad Scientist run off to stop the city from blowing up while Lois is stuck outside with Mad Scientist's assistant, Nihilist Jim.
NIHILIST JIM: There's no point to stopping the nuclear reactor really! In the grand scheme of things, we are of absolutely no importance. We're basically like on the level of ants or cockroaches.
LOIS: . . .
NIHILIST JIM: In case you missed it, by the way, that was me hitting on you.
LOIS: . . . . . . . . .
Superman saves the day, and the nuclear reactor does not explode -- much to the disappointment of Mad Scientist, who waits until everyone's gone and then sings a song a song called "REVENGE" about how he has failed to win the Nobel Prize ten times, and he's really MAD, and he is going to get his revenge on EVERYBODY by . . . KILLING SUPERMAN. How all these things are connected is sort of unclear!
Meanwhile, back at the Daily Planet, Evil Max sexually harasses Lois, Mad Men style. Lois has had enough of being hit on for one day, and puts him firmly in his place.
Then, in a SHOCKING TWIST, Max's secretary walks in and starts sexually harassing . . . Clark!
UNAPPRECIATED SECRETARY SYDNEY: I SEE POSSIBILITY HERE. Maybe if we took these glasses off . . . and started removing your clothes . . .
CLARK: oh god NOT THE GLASSES!!!
So now Clark is dating Unappreciated Secretary Sydney, and Lois, apparently, is dating Nihilist Jim. We're not sure when that happened, but now they're in a movie theater with Mad Scientist watching an educational documentary about Superman, so . . . it happened at some point!
And then Lois sings a song about how all she wants is to get married and have babies with Nihilist Jim, and I start feeling severely Lois-reporting-hijinks deprived.
Anyway, while Lois and Nihilist Jim are playing footsie, Mad Scientist has an epiphany related to Superman's backstory!
MAD SCIENTIST: Superman's parents dumped him off the planet! He has abandonment issues! HE NEEDS TO BE LOVED! So to destroy him, I just have to make sure he is no longer loved! My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity.
And then, alas, the inevitable RACIST PLOTLINE rears its ugly head, as Mad Scientist goes and hires a Chinese flying circus troupe to help him destroy Superman (they hate him because his flying antics put them out of work.) This is exactly as problematic as you think it is.
. . . but back to the evil plan! Which consists of:
Step 1: DEDICATE A BUILDING TO SUPERMAN and invite him to a big college party in his honor
Step 2: BLOW UP CITY HALL
Step 3: take a lot of photos of Superman looking confused and surrounded by co-eds while CITY HALL BLOWS UP
Oh no! Superman is . . . . discredited . . . forever . . .?
END ACT I
At the beginning of Act II, Superman has has taken to his apartment with the vapors when he hears . . . a knock on the door!
LOIS: Superman! What are you doing in Clark's apartment?
SUPERMAN: Clark . . . . is out of town . . . and I asked if I could borrow it . . .?
LOIS: Sounds legit.
To be fair, Lois is kind of distracted because Superman is busy breaking Clark's furniture and having a whiny breakdown over the first bad press he's ever received.
SUPERMAN: Why can’t the strongest man in the world
Be the happiest man in the world?
Why must I, the man of Steel, feel as helpless as a man of straw?
Don’t they know the strongest man can cry?
(Meanwhile, over in an alternate reality, Peter Parker is like, CRY MOAR.)
Lois is all, that's rough, buddy. By the way, not that we were dating, because you're completely emotionally unavailable, but either way I'm dumping you for Nihilist Jim.
She leaves, and Superman drops to his knees and shouts "LOIS, I LOVE YOU!" And we all burst out laughing while the rest of the audience glares at us.
Anyway, after this dramatic scene, it's back to . . . Evil Max and his secretary?
There's no real point to this scene except that dating Clark has apparently been GREAT for Unappreciated Secretary Sydney, because she proceeds to sing him the best song in the show. It's called "Oooh, Do You Love You" and it is glorious. "You're so sold on yourself, it's sorta sweet!" she coos, while encouraging Evil Max to make out with himself in a mirror. (Evil Max: pretends to be annoyed, actually looks tempted. The rest of us: mostly just want to make out with Unappreciated Secretary Sydney, who is clearly AMAZING.)
Actually, take a moment to go listen to the song. IT'S WORTH IT.
Tragically, in the middle of this number, Evil Max gets kidnapped by Mad Scientist, who has come to the mistaken conclusion that Evil Max is Superman.
However, once they sort this out, they decide they can TEAM UP to eliminate the Superman threat! Mad Scientist brings his genius to the table; Evil Max brings . . . uh, the fact that his secretary is dating Clark Kent?
Oh, and he also brings his VAUDEVILLE SKILLS, which are important for their team-up number, apparently.
So now the stage is set for the denouement!
Evil Max invites Unappreciated Secretary Sydney and Clark to a rocking party . . . in an abandoned power factory . . . at night . . .
. . . at which point Mad Scientist jumps out, sends Unappreciated Secretary Sydney home, and brings out . . . Lois Lane . . .?
(Why Team Evil went to all the trouble to kidnap and capture Lois Lane when Clark Kent's ACTUAL CURRENT GIRLFRIEND was right there is sort of unclear.)
But then Mad Scientist and the acrobats turn on Max and tie him up with Lois, which gives Lois the opportunity to sing a determined but racist song about how Superman will save them from the evil Chinese people, which we will skip over. Nihilist Jim is also kidnapped and brought there, for reasons which I hope are clear to someone but are certainly not to me, especially since he spends the rest of the scene just kind of hanging out and being irrelevant.
Meanwhile, back in Mad Scientist-land:
MAD SCIENTIST: Superman, you are psychologically damaged! You crave attention!
SUPERMAN: I . . . I do?
MAD SCIENTIST: You don't fight the cause of evil, you just catch criminals to make yourself feel better!
SUPERMAN: Oh, god, I -- it's so true! OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Five seconds later, Mad Scientist comes and gloats to Lois while dragging in Superman on a leash, a PSYCHOLOGICALLY BROKEN MAN.
Also the lead Chinese acrobat turns out to be a Communist spy who is going to blow up Metropolis, and all this plot literally comes in five minutes before the end, I DON'T KNOW EITHER.
But Lois shouts at Superman for a while, and so he gets better, rejects all that psychology stuff as for sissies, and beats up everybody in a song titled "Pow! Bam! Zonk!" which would be unabashedly delightful if the everybody he was beating up were not Chinese Communist spies and the whole subplot was not unabashedly racist.
Anyway, happy ending! Unappreciated Secretary Sydney continues to be the best character by smacking a sulky Evil Max into apologizing to Superman and then dragging him off by the tie; Nihilist Jim politely tells Lois that he likes her a lot but she is still clearly hung up on Superman, in a classier move than we really expected; Superman sort of kind of almost asks Lois out but then has to go save the world from a nuclear missile or something instead, and all is back to the status quo.
Oh, and Mad Scientist falls into a submarine propeller and dies, which means that he and the unfortunate cop from the beginning have the dubious privilege of being the only two characters not to survive the show. Congrats, dude!
innerbrat and I would have learned our lesson by now about comic book musicals.If so, YOU WOULD THINK WRONG.
This time we dragged
aberration to see a special this-week-only production of that work of sixties theatrical genius, It's A Bird . . . It's A Plane . . . It's Superman!The fun started when we looked at the cast list and realized that the actor who played Superman had previously starred in Beauty and the Beast . . . and not, for the record, as Beauty, or the Beast. So, for the rest of this recap, I want you to imagine Superman bursting into every scene a la Gaston. No one's neck is incredibly thick as Clark Kent's!
However, the show does not begin with Superman! It begins with a bunch of generic villains and one poor doomed police officer, who gets shot in the chest twice.
POLICE OFFICER: It's a bird! It's a plane! It's . . . *EXPIRES*
Cue: CARDBOARD CUTOUT SUPERMAN
You have to understand that Cardboard Superman is basically the star of the show. Like, every time Superman has to fly, he just kind of dives off into the wings, and then CARDBOARD CUTOUT SUPERMAN soars through the backdrop while various cast members ooh and ahh, and IT'S AMAZING and we all fell over laughing every time.
Anyway, Cardboard Superman catches up with the bad guys and then he comes back as Gaston Superman and sings a song about how his job is to be a giant boy scout.
GASTON SUPERMAN: The people need me!
THE PEOPLE: We need you!
LOIS LANE: I need him!
Yes, Lois Lane is here, and in love with Superman, and SUPER ANNOYED about it. She rants all about it to Clark Kent, who spends the whole time looking awkward and uncomfortable, as well he might.
Other people who are annoyed about Superman: Max Mencken, Evil Theater Critic Slash Gossip Columnist!
MAX MENCKEN: Man, if Superman weren't around, my gossip columns would totally make the front page EVERY DAY! But now instead we have to have all this news crap. WHATEVER.
UNAPPRECIATED SECRETARY SYDNEY: Max, you are giant tool.
MAX MENCKEN: I know, honey. I know.
BUT HOLD THE PHONE on all these newspaper shenanigans! Enter: A MAD SCIENTIST! Who would like everyone to know that his nuclear reactor is about to explode and maybe Superman could lend a hand with that?
Clark Kent dives off into a phone booth (much to the irritation of a construction worker lady who was trying to use that phone booth, JEEZ) and then he and Lois run off to the power reactor. Clark and the Mad Scientist run off to stop the city from blowing up while Lois is stuck outside with Mad Scientist's assistant, Nihilist Jim.
NIHILIST JIM: There's no point to stopping the nuclear reactor really! In the grand scheme of things, we are of absolutely no importance. We're basically like on the level of ants or cockroaches.
LOIS: . . .
NIHILIST JIM: In case you missed it, by the way, that was me hitting on you.
LOIS: . . . . . . . . .
Superman saves the day, and the nuclear reactor does not explode -- much to the disappointment of Mad Scientist, who waits until everyone's gone and then sings a song a song called "REVENGE" about how he has failed to win the Nobel Prize ten times, and he's really MAD, and he is going to get his revenge on EVERYBODY by . . . KILLING SUPERMAN. How all these things are connected is sort of unclear!
Meanwhile, back at the Daily Planet, Evil Max sexually harasses Lois, Mad Men style. Lois has had enough of being hit on for one day, and puts him firmly in his place.
Then, in a SHOCKING TWIST, Max's secretary walks in and starts sexually harassing . . . Clark!
UNAPPRECIATED SECRETARY SYDNEY: I SEE POSSIBILITY HERE. Maybe if we took these glasses off . . . and started removing your clothes . . .
CLARK: oh god NOT THE GLASSES!!!
So now Clark is dating Unappreciated Secretary Sydney, and Lois, apparently, is dating Nihilist Jim. We're not sure when that happened, but now they're in a movie theater with Mad Scientist watching an educational documentary about Superman, so . . . it happened at some point!
And then Lois sings a song about how all she wants is to get married and have babies with Nihilist Jim, and I start feeling severely Lois-reporting-hijinks deprived.
Anyway, while Lois and Nihilist Jim are playing footsie, Mad Scientist has an epiphany related to Superman's backstory!
MAD SCIENTIST: Superman's parents dumped him off the planet! He has abandonment issues! HE NEEDS TO BE LOVED! So to destroy him, I just have to make sure he is no longer loved! My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity.
And then, alas, the inevitable RACIST PLOTLINE rears its ugly head, as Mad Scientist goes and hires a Chinese flying circus troupe to help him destroy Superman (they hate him because his flying antics put them out of work.) This is exactly as problematic as you think it is.
. . . but back to the evil plan! Which consists of:
Step 1: DEDICATE A BUILDING TO SUPERMAN and invite him to a big college party in his honor
Step 2: BLOW UP CITY HALL
Step 3: take a lot of photos of Superman looking confused and surrounded by co-eds while CITY HALL BLOWS UP
Oh no! Superman is . . . . discredited . . . forever . . .?
END ACT I
At the beginning of Act II, Superman has has taken to his apartment with the vapors when he hears . . . a knock on the door!
LOIS: Superman! What are you doing in Clark's apartment?
SUPERMAN: Clark . . . . is out of town . . . and I asked if I could borrow it . . .?
LOIS: Sounds legit.
To be fair, Lois is kind of distracted because Superman is busy breaking Clark's furniture and having a whiny breakdown over the first bad press he's ever received.
SUPERMAN: Why can’t the strongest man in the world
Be the happiest man in the world?
Why must I, the man of Steel, feel as helpless as a man of straw?
Don’t they know the strongest man can cry?
(Meanwhile, over in an alternate reality, Peter Parker is like, CRY MOAR.)
Lois is all, that's rough, buddy. By the way, not that we were dating, because you're completely emotionally unavailable, but either way I'm dumping you for Nihilist Jim.
She leaves, and Superman drops to his knees and shouts "LOIS, I LOVE YOU!" And we all burst out laughing while the rest of the audience glares at us.
Anyway, after this dramatic scene, it's back to . . . Evil Max and his secretary?
There's no real point to this scene except that dating Clark has apparently been GREAT for Unappreciated Secretary Sydney, because she proceeds to sing him the best song in the show. It's called "Oooh, Do You Love You" and it is glorious. "You're so sold on yourself, it's sorta sweet!" she coos, while encouraging Evil Max to make out with himself in a mirror. (Evil Max: pretends to be annoyed, actually looks tempted. The rest of us: mostly just want to make out with Unappreciated Secretary Sydney, who is clearly AMAZING.)
Actually, take a moment to go listen to the song. IT'S WORTH IT.
Tragically, in the middle of this number, Evil Max gets kidnapped by Mad Scientist, who has come to the mistaken conclusion that Evil Max is Superman.
However, once they sort this out, they decide they can TEAM UP to eliminate the Superman threat! Mad Scientist brings his genius to the table; Evil Max brings . . . uh, the fact that his secretary is dating Clark Kent?
Oh, and he also brings his VAUDEVILLE SKILLS, which are important for their team-up number, apparently.
So now the stage is set for the denouement!
Evil Max invites Unappreciated Secretary Sydney and Clark to a rocking party . . . in an abandoned power factory . . . at night . . .
. . . at which point Mad Scientist jumps out, sends Unappreciated Secretary Sydney home, and brings out . . . Lois Lane . . .?
(Why Team Evil went to all the trouble to kidnap and capture Lois Lane when Clark Kent's ACTUAL CURRENT GIRLFRIEND was right there is sort of unclear.)
But then Mad Scientist and the acrobats turn on Max and tie him up with Lois, which gives Lois the opportunity to sing a determined but racist song about how Superman will save them from the evil Chinese people, which we will skip over. Nihilist Jim is also kidnapped and brought there, for reasons which I hope are clear to someone but are certainly not to me, especially since he spends the rest of the scene just kind of hanging out and being irrelevant.
Meanwhile, back in Mad Scientist-land:
MAD SCIENTIST: Superman, you are psychologically damaged! You crave attention!
SUPERMAN: I . . . I do?
MAD SCIENTIST: You don't fight the cause of evil, you just catch criminals to make yourself feel better!
SUPERMAN: Oh, god, I -- it's so true! OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Five seconds later, Mad Scientist comes and gloats to Lois while dragging in Superman on a leash, a PSYCHOLOGICALLY BROKEN MAN.
Also the lead Chinese acrobat turns out to be a Communist spy who is going to blow up Metropolis, and all this plot literally comes in five minutes before the end, I DON'T KNOW EITHER.
But Lois shouts at Superman for a while, and so he gets better, rejects all that psychology stuff as for sissies, and beats up everybody in a song titled "Pow! Bam! Zonk!" which would be unabashedly delightful if the everybody he was beating up were not Chinese Communist spies and the whole subplot was not unabashedly racist.
Anyway, happy ending! Unappreciated Secretary Sydney continues to be the best character by smacking a sulky Evil Max into apologizing to Superman and then dragging him off by the tie; Nihilist Jim politely tells Lois that he likes her a lot but she is still clearly hung up on Superman, in a classier move than we really expected; Superman sort of kind of almost asks Lois out but then has to go save the world from a nuclear missile or something instead, and all is back to the status quo.
Oh, and Mad Scientist falls into a submarine propeller and dies, which means that he and the unfortunate cop from the beginning have the dubious privilege of being the only two characters not to survive the show. Congrats, dude!
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Date: 2013-03-21 05:19 am (UTC)Okay, yes, Silver Age comics were pretty much like this. Fair.
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:28 am (UTC)this this this x250000
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:32 pm (UTC)Maybe just because I feel like it should be on a Puck playlist.
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Date: 2013-03-21 12:59 pm (UTC)Little known fact: there could have been more superhero musical of dubious merit. In the 80s, Marvel tried to mount a Captain America musical, and even ran an ad in its comics looking for a 10 to 14 year old girl to play his plucky sidekick. And Jim Steinman talked about a Batman musical in the 90s (leading to the hilarious spoof of such on Batman Beyond).
With any luck, Joss will do a musical Marvel film at some point.
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:38 pm (UTC)I would totally go see all these superhero musicals, but THAT'S BECAUSE I'M A SUCKER.
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Date: 2013-03-22 01:31 pm (UTC)Did you see the very positive review in the Times today? The critic liked in the most non-ironic way possible. I was stunned.
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Date: 2013-03-21 01:34 pm (UTC)*giggling*
How were the costumes and stuff? Like, was it nonsensical but A Spectacle, or was everything cardboard and thrift store outfits?
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:40 pm (UTC)Moooooore towards the latter than the former, but with design! Like, as Debi described it, it was all very four-color. Lots of cardboard scenery and bright sixties minidresses and CARDBOARD SUPERMAN soaring over all.
(Also, Gaston Superman's other credits include Enjolras. I'm just saying.)
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Date: 2013-03-21 07:48 pm (UTC)(Ha! THE PEOPLE NEED HIM, Becca. Him and his prettiness.)
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Date: 2013-03-21 08:02 pm (UTC)This probably would have been more effective if the combo of scenes made any sense . . .
(If Enjolras is Gaston, does that make Grantaire Lefou?)
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Date: 2013-03-21 08:08 pm (UTC)(I... don't even remember who Lefou is. *unhelpful* I was thinking that really the only points of likeness between Enjolras and Gaston anyway are willingness to be extremely violent and attractiveness sufficient to acquire swooning fans, so possibly Grantaire is the Random Village Girls? Uh.)
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Date: 2013-03-21 08:18 pm (UTC)So, you know. *helpful*)
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