Holy Arena Batman!

One of the first fan letters I ever wrote was to Batman. 

As far as I was concerned he lived at the studios of ATV,  the television company whose logo appeared after his adventures each Saturday and Sunday night in the 1960s. In those days you could rely on the Royal mail and a letter addressed to “Batman, ATV television" brought me a signed photograph of the Caped Crusader and his sidekick the Boy Wonder. It was a cherished possession. I'm talking about the 1960s television version of the comic book heroes adventures. I can't remember what “stirrings" the tights clad legs of our hero Bruce Wayne  may or may not have produced but I do remember being terribly worried in the episode when Bruce Wayne turned “bad" and for almost 20 min Batman was working in conjunction with the Penguin and the Joker against the sole efforts of Robin. As there was a cliff hanger from Saturday night to Sunday, one small Yorkshire boy had a disturbed sleep that night.

I'm not sure I've ever been as taken by the new franchise as I was by these early television adventures from my boyhood. There have been brilliant performances in the new films and it's certainly re invented the hero for a whole new generation.  Ever since these early television adventures I've come to associate Batman with a certain level of high camp (any series that allows Eartha Kit to play “Catwoman - how could it be otherwise?)  and perhaps the new films have always been a little too dark and taken themselves a little too seriously.

It was therefore with a high degree of anticipation that I looked forward to seeing “Batman live" ever since Richard came home from work and told me that he was working on it. Surely any translation of these adventures to the stage had to have some sense of the theatrical about them. Rich saw the opening night in Manchester and thought it was great.  It has been generally really well reviewed  as a quality entertainment that really holds its own. I was so excited  therefore last Thursday evening  to finally get the chance to actually see it. I've been very busy lately - I couldn't accompany Rich to the opening night in London and finding an evening free has been a real problem. So together with my choreographer friend Lee Crowley I set off for the O2  with high hopes for a good evening. The production is certainly imaginative. You can see where the money is being spent, something I always like in theatre. There was an absolutely stunning video wall which creates the most incredible effects during the show, and there are live events and happenings that will make you gasp. The actors worked really hard,  and the performances on the whole are great fun.

All this of course is only evident if you're actually watching. Something a lot of the audience seems to have a bit of a problem with. For “Batman live" is an arena show! An increasingly popular genre from producers bringing large-scale entertainments to the public.  It means that the incredibly high production expenditure which exists on a show such as this can more easily be met by the huge capacities of the arenas in which the show will play. That's probably being a bit simplistic but in essence it's true. There's something strange about watching what is essentially a piece of theatre in an arena. There doesn't seem to be a need to commit to it. It's at arms length and you don't really have to engage with it. Despite having paid a small mortgage for their tickets at least 15% of the audience wandered into the O2 Arena on Thursday evening  up to 20 min late.  As the lighting for the arena spills well over into the audience, denying you that womb like darkness of the cinema, all this activity is incredibly visible. The worst thing for me was at the end of the evening, after the tremendously hard-working cast had finished the show and they came out to take their bows.  That moment in theatre when audience and actors come together. Not at the O2. As soon as the vast percentage of the audience realised that this was just a curtain call they stood up in their seats and started to leave streaming out of the arena without so much as a backward look. It had the same effect as the audience  racing out of the cinema while the credits play. No desire to know who they've been watching or who was responsible for the last 2 hours transportation of delights that they have experienced. It meant that the whole event lacks any sense of community, any sense of having shared the story together.   That is why  despite incredible creative inventiveness hard-working cast and a production budget that could keep a repertory theatre running for a year, I found the whole experience rather hollow.

However I've  just discovered however that they're showing reruns of the 1960s Batman episodes on one of the digital channels.

“Holy revival Batman! How cool is that?"