Review – Superman 2050 By Theater Un-Speak-Able (Times Square International Theater Festival 2012)
by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on January 23, 2012
Deploying a short and narrow raised, wooden platform, with a total area surface of 21 square feet, seven actors in blue spandex outfits (that’s 3 square feet each they have to work with; you do the math!), no scenery or lighting effects, and just 35 minutes, Theater Un-Speak-Able set out to tell that well-worn saga of our age, Superman, transposing it to the year 2050. No actor gets to leave the platform during the telling. All of the fantastical visual effects necessary in the elaboration of this story – illustrated comic book panels, complexly designed camera shots – must be generated solely by the actors as they shuffle, dip, duck, dodge and dive while dramatizing such a highly visual narrative. This is both extreme physical performative stagecraft and compacted theatrical story telling.
