View From the Phlipside - Superman the Musical

Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.


I came across an article about a newly opened musical revival of a Broadway flop and realized I didn’t know which surprised me more.  That the musical had been made in the first place or that someone was trying to revive it.  The scale is almost perfectly balanced by both surprises.

I must admit that I never knew that someone had not only written a Superman musical but that it had run on Broadway for almost 130 performances.   The original was offered up in the mid-60’s when the button down image of the Clark Kent/Superman look was not particularly fashionable.  My research also indicates that there wasn’t much of a story line, called the book, for the original.  It had a couple good songs and a decent cast but disappeared without much of a ripple.  


Some 40 years later the Dallas Theater Center has debuted an update of the original.  The Center’s director Kevin Moriarty brought two of his childhood obsessions, musicals and The Man of Steel, back together again.  Working with the original musical composers, Broadway legends Charles Strouse and Lee Adams (think Bye, Bye Birdie, Annie and)  plus a well respected writer with a background at Marvel Comics AND playwrighting Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and they were off and running.


The show has just debuted in Dallas in the last two weeks.  Reviews are generally pretty good.  Some reviews indicate there are some rough spots but that should be expected for any brand new version of a show.  The cast presents some interesting new looks.  Not only is Lois Lane a much more assertive professional woman she is being played by an African American actress, Zakiya Young.  When asked if she thought audiences would be troubled by that she laughingly shrugged it off noting that Superman was from outer space anyway.  


Early ticket sales have been pretty good apparently if only from the curious.


So what then to make of all of this?  Even the original got pretty good reviews though it never generated much of an audience.  In the hands of some like Moriaty gives it a good head start since he has such a devotion to both the genre and the character.  Add in talented writing and the flexibility of Strouse and Adams to add tunes, drop others and juggle things around and it just might work.


“It’s a Bird...It’s a Plane...It’s Superman” has until the end of the month to prove if it can fly.



Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010