Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa gets super, man

Dallas Theater Center today announced a season that will include a revised version of It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman, with a new book by playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. (They announced some other stuff too, but my nerd brain zoomed right in on this.)

Despite a score by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, It's a Bird is an eye-roller for those of us in the tiny little slice of Venn diagram where comics fans and musical fans overlap. The original book by Robert Benton and David Newman is jokey and generic, and bears little resemblance to Metropolis as we know it from the comics or the various movies and TV shows. Top billing in the Broadway production, which ran just 129 performances, went not to the actors portraying Superman or Lois Lane but to Jack Cassidy, who played a lothario newspaper columnist invented by Benton and Newman. A 1975 TV version only made things worse.

Aguirre-Sacasa knows comics and has written quite a bit for Marvel Comics; given full rein to construct something decent around Adams and Strouse's songs, well, let's just say I have higher hopes for this than I do for Julie Taymor and Bono. Aguirre-Sacasa and I talked comics quite a bit in this December 2007 interview, which centered on Steppenwolf's premiere of his Good Boys and True.

(h/t my friend Mandy at DTC!)

Comments

[Mandy]

There's an article in the Dallas Observer's blog that gives some more information on this collaboration with Aguirre-Sacasa and our artistic director's lifelong love of comics. I'm so freaking excited for this play.

[Mandy]

Here's the link, since apparently my html didn't work the first time: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2009/04/the_defining_moment_of_superhe.php

[Esther]

Thanks for the update on Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. I saw "Good Boys and True" off-Broadway and found it very compelling. I know it didn't get great reviews and the plot changed a bit from Chicago. Still, I was moved by it. So I'm interested to see what he does next.