Supes Does Dallas

Comics Culture, Comics Fine Art, Top Story — July 8, 2010 at 11:37 Share

The 1966 Broadway musical, “It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane… It’s Superman” has been revived by The Dallas Theater Center.  The creators of the original musical, along with the Center’s theater director Kevin Moriarty, have stripped away the jokey veneer and have set their sites on competing with the upcoming “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” on Broadway.

The New York Times is reporting:

The revival is “by far the biggest production we’ve ever done,” Mr. Moriarty said, with an $800,000 budget, a cast of 24 and more than 100 costume changes. It follows Superman from the planet Krypton to rural Smallville to bustling Metropolis. But the heart of the story is a love-hate triangle of Lois Lane, Clark Kent/Superman and Maxwell Menken, a corrupt businessman who is jealous at being dethroned as the most powerful man around.

The production, which runs through July 25, was a chance for Mr. Moriarty to bring together two of his own longtime loves: musical theater and comic books. “In the schoolyard battles of Marvel vs. DC, I was firmly a DC kid,” he recalled during an interview just hours before the first preview.

Mr. Moriarty, 44, flies his comic-geek flag proudly: a table in his office was piled with collected editions of Superman stories. As a child he chanced upon a cast recording of the 1966 production and made up his own story to go along with the songs.

“We wanted to hit a tone that was bright and joyful, not camp, not satire,” Mr. Moriarty said. “Theater artists of my generation have been in an age of irony. This piece is outside of all that.”

Tags: Top Story