Picture: Matt Marlin and Simona Sermont for Shooting Theatre
SuperYou: The Musical in Concert was at the Lyric Theatre, London.
Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩
Superheroes have made a definitive transition from the comic book page to the silver screen in recent years. But whether on the page or screen, female characters haven’t always gained the prominence or appreciation levels of their male counterparts. Look at The Marvels, the latest Marvel film released last week and the franchise’s first all-woman team-up. While the better among the studio’s recent efforts, the movie has suffered at the box office: not only from the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike preventing the cast from publicising the film in advance but an onslaught of comic book consumers convinced that women shouldn’t be lead characters at all.
Fortuitous timing, then, that a concert version of a new musical not only tries to transition superheroes to the stage, an arena only rarely troubled by caped crusaders (1966’s It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman is barely remembered, while 2011’s Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark remains talked about for all the wrong reasons), it also centres women at its heart.
SuperYou, with book, music and lyrics by Lourds Lane, is a tale of a brother and sister who together escape their family circumstance (after leaving her abusive husband, their mother develops alcoholism and has trouble keeping down a job) by drawing superhero versions of themselves. Matty (Jonty Peach) turns himself into “M Power”, while Katie (played in her young form by Aaliyah Monk) turns herself into Lightning Girl. Her four schoolfriends – like her, misfits who get bullied a lot – she transforms into a superhero squad, the Boltz.
The musical gains as stage entertainment over previous comic book adaptations because the drawings, the capes and the outfits are just coping mechanisms; the real story is Katie and her growing journey of self-acceptance. As Lightning Girl, Monk constantly battles the mysterious villain Mi-Roar (Will Bozier), fights which play out as contemporary dance routines.
Even as Katie grows and becomes played by Lucie Jones, Monk continues to play the alter ego; Katie’s demons that have plagued her force her to remain the scared little girl. That’s all well and good, and when Jones arrives on stage as part of the play’s clumsily handled time jumps from childhood to adulthood, she brings with her a sense of confidence in the material that makes it easy, though not impossible, to overlook some of the musical’s plotting and pacing issues.
Most of those difficulties spring from a lack of connection to the people in Katie’s life. The four schoolfriends she transforms on the page to form The Boltz don’t really exist in their non-superhero form for us. While the vocal performances are dynamic, especially from Sharon Ballard’s Blast and Jenny O’Leary as Ima-Mazing, their introduction mainly slows the development of Katie’s own story.
That also means that as they reappear throughout Act I, usually to assure Katie of her need to tighten her resolve, the emotional impact of what they say is lessened. And while comic-style drawings of their superhero essence accompany each of the Boltz, it is a little puzzling as to why O’Leary, whose character sings so confidently about accepting her larger body size, is represented as the sort of slim-waisted, large-chested female stereotype of a superheroine instead of the beautiful character on stage and presented in lyrical form.
In the story’s main plot, we meet Jay (Luke Brady), a barista with musical ambitions and great chemistry with Jones’ Katie. It makes it all the more heartbreaking when Jay’s singer-songwriter career begins to take off, and Katie is left behind while called upon to use her cartooning skills to help him instead of concentrating on her work.
It is a credit to the actors that they wring emotion out of this storyline as the book switches Jay’s character from compassionate boyfriend to career-obsessed chauvinist in the blink of an eye. Katie gets pulled not two but three ways, as her increasingly erratic mother finally consents to going to rehab. But this plot strand, which should be the most affecting of all, suffers because the mother (Maddy Brennan) has no character to speak of; instead, she occasionally wanders across the stage with balletic moves and a bottle in her hand.
And that is the problem at the heart of SuperYou. There is the skeleton of a meaningful story in there, focusing on how art offers us escapism and healing when one’s personal life is falling apart. But the show placed around it has precious little meat to it, and what there is is poorly structured and narratively incoherent.
On the night, watching Jones and a strong cast is enjoyable despite the material, rather than because of it. But if you want to see a group of female superheroes who have each other’s backs, overcome difficulties and become inspirations to those of us with no powers, The Marvels is a much better bet.
Scott Matthewman
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