Themes of Superheroes in Stage Musicals and Why it Might Benefit Broadway

With a U2-penned Musical on Spiderman, the Conflicted Superhero is a Familiar Plot Recipe for the Stage

When it seems that superhero movies keep mainstream Hollywood from heading into the red each year, it shouldn't be surprising then why Broadway had a synapse in thinking musicals about superheroes could potentially work on the stage. After all, with Broadway heading close to going into the tank recently due to America's faltering economy, they needed to try something different and perhaps overly familiar to get an audience. Or was it really that left-field of a choice to bring legendary "Lion King" puppeteer/director extraordinaire Julie Taymor back to Broadway with her musical take on the story of Spiderman? With the basic story structure behind the world's greatest superhero characters, it's not much different than the plot structure to any of Broadway's greatest plays and musicals.

Broadway's earliest musicals in the 1920's utilizing popular song may have been written by the likes of Gershwin, Porter and Kern--but they always featured one aspect to their tales: The troubled protagonist who's out to save the world and dealing with romantic complications with their significant other who may or may not become their fiancée. While you didn't see those plots get to complex levels until Rodgers and Hart took it to higher terrain with their masterful integration of complex storytelling and song starting in the 1940's, the male protagonist always wanted to be a superhero, even if it was through allegorical means.

It's a wonder then that Broadway didn't take on the direct superhero idea sooner when the true classic age of Broadway was going concurrently with the golden age of superhero comic books. The question has never been asked why Broadway waited until Superman was arguably at his least popular to do a musical about the Kryptonite-challenged superhero. A Superman musical in the 1940's or 50's would have likely been a smash.