Missed Directions: Bat-Bedazzled Broadway

I’ve been in a bit of a funk ever since I heard about the planned Broadway adaptation of Batman. Some things just shouldn’t go from the page to the stage and Batman’s one of them. Now, yes, I can imagine a child enjoying the Bam! Pow! Action of the Dark Knight live and in the flesh, but there’s just something wrong, nay, unholy about a Batman stage show.

First off, it reminds me of when I saw Bugs Bunny in Space on stage as a child. An enjoyable outing, but do we really want Batman reduced to the level of the legendary, albeit hardcore cartoony character Bugs Bunny? What’s next: Batman on Ice? Actually, that would be kinda cool. I might prefer that to a stage version of Batman. There’s just something wrong with Batman flying around stage like Peter Pan with Jungian shadow issues. Especially if there’s no music.

But if they change their minds about the music, maybe the Hoff can star.

It’s easy enough to imagine, just there at the outskirts of possibility. David Letterman levels a copy of the Playbill upright on his desk. The Hoff is in the primary guest seat. But Dave’s first guest, Broadway authority and aficionado Nathan Lane (or possibly Dave’s old friend and familiar rival, Regis Philburn) has remained on. ‘Batman concludes its run this weekend’. The audience seems about to slip into a lull, but Dave brings them back with a crack about the Hoff having hosting WWE’s Monday Night Raw in London earlier this year. Regis (or possibly Nathan) chips in. ‘Now that’s just kooky’, Dave sputters. ‘We know Nathan (or Regis) is a kooky guy’, Paul Shaffer echoes. The audience roars with laughter.

We’re probably all a little less shaky just listening to Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell III, which contains music pitched for Batman, the Musical when the project was first suggested back in the late 70s. Batman, on Broadway. It all sounds a bit macabre, perverse and is, most certainly, a Missed Direction.