5x5 Theatre Review: Kavalier & Clay

So, I went to Book-It Theatre last night with buddy Margaret to see their adaptation of The Amazing Adventures of Kavlaier & Clay. What is Book-It? Here it is in their own words:

Book-It creates world-premiere adaptations of classic and contemporary literature for the stage, preserving the narrative text as it is spoken, not by a single “narrator” but as dialogue by the characters in the production. This technique [...] allows the Book-It theatre experience to spark the audience’s interest in reading and to challenge the audience to participate by using their imaginations. Book-It’s unique style of acting and adapting books is trademarked, known as the Book-It Style™.

I did not know that it was trademarked. Anyway...

1. The production was four hours long: a five-hour running time with two ten-minute intermissions and a forty-minute dinner break. We were there from just before 6 pm to just after 11 pm. Despite this, huge swaths of the novel were cast aside, and the adaptation focused on two themes: Joe Kavalier Hates Germans and Sammy Clay Is Gay. As a result, the play moves along briskly and the evening never felt a lag.

2. The lead actors were excellent. David Goldstein captured Sammy's alternating bravado and self-loathing perfectly. Frank Boyd made an engaging Joe, thin and intellectual and sad, although he did have to resist the urge to act with his accent. Opal Peachey was a lovely young surrealist Rosa (and Luna Moth in a fantasy sequence) but really shone as older, bitter, weary suburban Rosa. The huge cast of characters was presented by an ensemble; only a few of the multiple-roles were occasionally jarring.

3. The scenic design and costumes were minimalist and presentational but serviceable, if nothing extraordinary. Two elements didn't work for me: one, the art that was shown enlarged as Joe would draw something just wasn't good enough - Joe is supposed to have a very delicate, professional drawing style influenced by his fine art training, and the images that were supposedly his were not bad, just cartoonish. In addition, the stagehands were in costume as they changed props and sets; it was a bit distracting, especially when they did not join the scene as extras.

4. Everybody in attendance seemed to have a favorite scene or line and were either pleased or disappointed to find its inclusion or absence. I was glad to find the What is the Why? scene fully intact, along with its Do Mine Next follow-up in the Rat Hole; on the other hand, Margaret was disappointed that the extended Antarctic sequence was truncated and presented mostly symbolically and with little detail. Surprisingly, the Golem of Prague is mentioned only a few times, and is never a presence in the story at all.

5. The play seemed of two minds about showing superheroes, the genre and fad that the play is set within. I mentioned that Luna Moth's origin story is indeed portrayed; Sammy's Dad, the circus strongman Mighty Molecule, also makes an early appearance in an awesome costume, foreshadowing the whole trope. But while the origin of the Escapist is acted out by all the characters in a fantasy tableau, just like with Luna Moth, the depiction ends before Tom Mayflower dons his costume. The only time we see the Escapist costume is when Joe wears it in the Empire State Building scene toward the end. The lack of an appearance, either in an enlarged image or in a fantasy sequence, by the character that drives the boys' fortunes seems a pretty odd omission, and it left quite a hole in the narrative for me.

Overall, a worthwhile production and a great night at the theatre.

Bonus Material

In the lobby of the theatre, they had erected a display educating the audience not about the book, but about comic themselves. Here's what it looked like:



I had some quibbles with the setup. The display seemed to read from left to right, but the chronology was off. They didn't distinguish between comic books and strips clearly, and some of the facts seemed incorrect. It was still a nice touch.

Good sense of history: pre-Batman Detective Comics.

Bonus points for using material from obscure publishers, not just the Big Two.

Mad props for including the original Red Tornado.

Charlie Brown, Sandman, and Doc Savage: an example of the odd chronology.

Rumination and a Query

So, while I was looking for something else entirely, I came across this image on someone's genealogy blog. I was of course intrigued by the Seattle connection. The attribution said the image came from the Tuesday, March 5, 1940 edition of The Seattle Daily Times (now just the Seattle Times) and I was hoping that it was a teaser for an appearance by a Superman actor at a department store or amusement park. I was so intrigued that I paid to have access to the full article: it turned out that the story was a promotion for the Superman comic strip, which was to begin running in the newspaper the following Monday.

The most fascinating characteristic of the article is that the writer had to explain who Superman was. Here are some excerpts from the piece, starting with the opening:

The writer continues with a short summary of the origin story, with "Jor-L" predicting Krypton's doom, the infant in the rocket, and the Kansas orphanage. He closes with this:

What struck me was how new it all was. Superhero was not yet a genre - this strip called "Superman" was still an 'exciting adventure strip.' There are no clichés yet, no tropes, no stereotypes: a cape, a mask, and a secret identity had not yet become trite or been reduced to shorthand emblems; [fill-in-the-blank]-man jokes were not the commonplace they are now. The whole genre was still being created. If I created a new superhero comic strip and had it syndicated today (miracle though that would be) the strip would be described as such, in those words, and the character would probably compared to anther superhero. (Metropolis has Superman, Gotham has Batman - and Bigtown has Captain Fireworks!)

This familiarity has in-story effects as well having a real-world, social dimension. Not only were these types of stories new to the readers, but these types of heroes were new to the other characters in the stories. A tough cookie like Lois Lane could be shocked, confused, or mystified by a seemingly normal person with extra-normal abilities - especially one wearing a costume and purporting to be an altruistic do-gooder. But now, 75 years after Superman came to Seattle, we've all read about or heard about or seen superheroes, and it is hard to imagine a fictional world in which people haven't. In 1978, the classic "You've got me - who's got you?!" line from Superman - The Movie was clever enough for us to forget that the idea of being surprised by a superhero was already wearing a bit thin. By last year's Man of Steel, it really required a willing suspension of disbelief to go with the idea that no one in the 21st century had any familiarity with the concept of super-powered people - or alien invasions.

Because we have a similar problem in other genres. How could anyone not recognize a mothership now, or at least be familiar with the concept? If an alien invasion happened for real, our population (at least the industrialized, hollywooded world) would have all sorts of cultural narrative contextualizing their response - how can we accept movie people reacting any differently? Same for zombie movies: can anyone watch a zombie movie now and believe that the characters have never seen a zombie movie?

The downside of this can be a kind of hermetically-sealed narrative: in superhero comics, there are in-story comics about real superheroes, police departments have metahuman squads, alien civilizations have embassies, and government agencies register superheroes: every cultural facet is accounted for. Alternatively, the stories become cutely self-referential: a superhero who is real in the narrative is compared in dialog to another fictional character who is fictional in that reality; characters allude to Star Wars and E.T. whenever movie aliens invade; and zombie movie characters make in-joke references to other zombie movies. I guess I miss the idea that something fantastical could actually be new, to both me and the characters in the story. But other than setting a story in a historical period before the rise of these genre tropes, I'm not sure how to do that.

The saying goes that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I guess you also never get a second chance to be the first superhero.

***

PS: On July 5th, when there hadn't been a post in this blog for a week, I got five or six times my usual hits. What the what?

5x5 Movie Review: Maleficient = Magnificent

Maleficent - directed by Robert Stromberg, starring Angelina Jolie, Disney Studios

1. I saw Angelina Jolie in the 1998 film Playing by Heart, in which she delivered one of my top ten favorite scenes from all movies and I was convinced that she was one of the greatest actresses of all time. I liked her as much in this as I did after seeing that, despite everything that has happened in between.

2. Revisiting and revising fairy tales is all the rage right now, from comics' Fables to television's Once Upon a Time, and Maleficent could easily be placed on that band wagon. The film has such intelligence and grace, and was so well-written, that it rises above the merely trendy and stands on its own as a great film.

3. The writing has some wonderful, delicate touches. Philip must pass through a wall of thorns to be joined with the Sleeping Beauty and true love's kiss is all that can break the curse, but as Alan Moore wrote of Batman's world in the introduction to Dark Knight Returns, "everything is exactly the same, except for the fact that it's totally different."

4. The only false note in the whole affair for me was the voice-over narration, of which I could have done with a lot less. I understand its purpose in the film's ethos, I think, and it did help keep the running time down to 97 minutes (am I the only one tired of two-and-a-half hour movies becoming routine?), but at times it seemed superfluous.

5. On the other hand, the filmmakers showed great restraint with the CGI; Peter Jackson and other should take note. Fantasy lands and the clash of armies are wonderful and wondrous when they are done well, but all too often enough is not enough and the film piles on more creatures and effects that the imaginary landscapes can even support. This film paints its canvas with a wonderful, fey world and harsh iron kingdom, but never lets the fantastical get in the way of the human and the real. We remain focused on the characters, and on Jolie in particular, and that is what you really want to see, anyway.

So, go see it...

He is Iron Man

So, a couple weeks back I got an email from a Seattle pal who now lives in Spain while she was on vacation in Denmark (some life, eh?). She wrote:

Look what's painted in the office/guest room in the flat I'm staying in in Copenhagen... I am pretty super-hero illiterate and don't know who this is, but it's still kinda cool, no?

Here's the image she enclosed:

I wrote back and told her that it was Iron Man ("the guy Robert Downey Junior has played in what, four movies now?") and further that (a) I guessed someone had used a seventies-era Gene Colon drawing as a guide when painting the mural and (b) yes, it was indeed major cool.

What interested me most about the exchange was her reply:

I was gonna say Iron Man because of the circle on his chest, but he didn't look like movie Iron Man, so I doubted. Too bad we don't get to see RDJ in *this* get up...

So it seems that now, at least for casual fans, circle-on-chest = Iron Man (maybe). The visual device that the movies created to represent Tony Stark's chest plate dependency seems to have burned at least somewhat into the general consciousness.

And yeah, I'd like to have seen this armor on the movie, too.

5x5 Book Review: Who Can Save us Now?

Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories by Owen King (Editor), John McNally (Editor), Chris Burnham (Illustrator)

1. The behind-the-colon portion of the title of this book is misleading. Each of the stories in this collections features someone who has super-powers or who is exceptional in some way; very few of them contain stories about anyone who is a hero, either nominally or by their actions. 

2. These stories are what I would call literary fiction: in a nutshell, they are introspective, character-driven, slow-moving, and often a bit lyrical. Most of the stories do not generally aspire to reflect on or investigate the nature of heroism at all, much less superheroics; in the few cases when the attempt is made, is just seems like a prose version of something like the Avengers Initiative. The books feels less like an attempt to expand or experiment with genre boundaries than it does like slumming; Paul Chadwicks' Concrete did a better job than this collection of playing with the "reality" of superheroes.

3. I know that as literary fiction, these stories need to be Serious, but do they always have to be so depressing, too? The characters are, by and large, morally bankrupt, sexually impotent, and ethically challenged, and make bad choices, form dysfunctional relationships, and engage in destructive behavior. Only four of the 22 stories end on any kind of hopeful note, and only one is even mildly heroic. If a story makes me feel like I need a Zoloft, does that mean it was good?

4. The stories are illustrated, not with sequential art, but rather just with title page drawings. The artist, Chris Burnham, has done comic book work (he seems to sit at the same stylistic table with Frank Quitely) but his work here seems sketchy and almost anti-comicky, as if the editors really didn't want this book mistaken for a graphic novel. Because then it wouldn't be Serious.

5. I am sure that the editors and many of the authors have more than a passing acquaintance with superhero comics, at least based on the biographical notes and a few of the reference made in the stories. But all of them seemed to be running away from the superhero genre, its conventions and tropes, its potential and its flaws, even its art style. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but rather than asking "What would it really be like for a superhero-person if they were damaged emotionally?" these stories seem to say "Hey, let's put a mask on Holden Caulfield!"

Since this book came out in 2008, this should have a Late to the Party label as well...

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things

So, Wonder Wife and I watched the much-ballyhooed third season of Sherlock recently/finally. After all the hoorar and to-do, I wonder if anything would have lived up to expectations created, byur frankly, I was disappointed. Without being too spoilery for anyone who is going to be finally-er than we were, here are some observations:

§ Regardless of the popularity of the show, two short seasons seems not enough in the bank to start including the sort of self-referential and fan-service bits that have been popping up.

§ Too much Mycroft and too much British Intelligence. Both should be used sparingly; as others have commented, I wanted to see Sherlock tackle more quotidian mysteries.

§ I do not like Mary Watson's backstory at all.

§ The season final reveal: bo-ring.

But all is not lost: do you want to see clever and complex mysteries solved by a brilliant, eccentric, socially-challenged investigator and his stalwart companion? Look no further than Dirk Gently.

Based on the character created by Douglas Adams (of Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame) who appears in two novels (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul), this BBC series ran only for a pilot and three episodes, so the oeuvre is just one-third the size of Sherlock's, but it packs much more brio into its short run. Dirk Gently bears as little direct correlation to it hero's novels as Sherlock does to Doyle's stories, but while it changes details the show does capture the elan and spirit of the books.

Less mannered than the Baker Street series, Dirk Gently overflows with energy that is chaotic but never random. Dirk's insistence on the interconnectedness of all things and his "holistic" approach bear fruit, but never through coincidence: plots are clockwork in precision, details are important, and the mysteries are fair play all the way. Dirk also moves in a world of lost cats, cheating husbands, and stolen university technology; that these cases are often spiced with fantastical elements makes them no less grounded in the real world.

And it's really funny.

Check it out. It's a shining gem that was unfortunately lost in a reshuffle of BBC-Four broadcasting policies.

Hit and myth

So, I read this pretty good graphic novel trilogy. It's about an Amazon warrior - a princess, actually - who discovers her parentage is not what she thought, and that she's actually one of the many offspring of that king of the gods and serial adulterer, Zeus himself. When this revelation comes to light, it of course upsets Hera, who is extremely jealous and has a habit of punishing not Zeus, but his children by mortal (and other) women.

Hera's attempted amercement starts a chain of events that leads to the Amazon allying herself with (and coming into to conflict with) various Greek gods (such as Hermes and Strife) and mythical creatures (such as a tag-team of killer centaurs). It is a dark voyage the heroine takes, leading her to hell (the person and the place) and revealing knowledge heretofore withheld from her - such as the Amazonian tradition of raping sailors and then killing any male offspring (a practice curbed by Hephaestus's taking them in as laborers).

The story is set in the present day, and the warrior encounters some of her half-siblings: other modern children of Zeus, living in the 21st century with the spark of the immortal flowing through their veins and possessed of some paranormal powers as a result. She also finds herself protecting an unwed mother, a promiscuous, rash, angry, lower-class young woman - the kind of girl often called a "slut" in certain circles - who is presented unflinchingly, unapologetically, and sympathetically. And who wields a mean shotgun. Oh - and there's a spaceman, too,

It's a pretty good story. It just isn't a Wonder Woman story, although it says so on the cover. Yep, that's my précis of Blood, Guts, and Iron, the first three volumes of the collected New 52! Wonder Woman series.

After I read this story, I felt the same way I did at the end of Man of Steel, the latest Superman movie. It wasn't an exceptionally bad movie, although it wasn't a very good one, and the Krypton scenes were wonderful (if a bit overstuffed). But it certainly wasn't a Superman movie: none of the elements of the mythos (can we call it that now?) associated with the character was there to any appreciable degree. There was some window dressing of names and places and such, but really, it would have been a better movie if the protagonist hadn't been Kal-El and it could have been judged on its own terms.

I think Diana got the same short shrift in these volumes. This isn't a bad story - the summary sounds a little bit like one for a post-modern, magical realism novel, and the comic pretty much reads that way as well - but where's Wonder Woman? Where are the themes and motifs that made her part of the Trinity and put her onto the landscape of American - world - culture? Does she really need to find out everything you thought you knew was a lie™? Does she really need to be a daughter of Zeus - wasn't being an Amazon enough? Does she really need Orion of the New Gods and a bunch of Hellblazer cast members to help her out?

Ah, then, maybe I'm overreacting - or mis-contextualizing. Maybe the relationship between my Wonder Woman and the New 52! Wonder Woman is more like the relationship between the Martin Nodell Green Lantern and the Julie Schwartz/John Broome Green Lantern. I mean, if there had been an internet in 1959, would people like me have been decrying the major transformation of their favorite hero not just in theme and appearance, but even in name and history as well?

I dunno. For now, I'm going to ignore WW.52 and just remember "my" Wonder Woman. Time to get out the DVD of New Frontier...