When Rod Peter Jr.’s interest in 1940s and ‘50s radio plays led him to stumble upon a curious bit of American boosterism called The Adventures of Superman, he knew that he wanted to bring it to the stage. And while Peter staged a version of the radio play a couple of years ago, another script combining several episodes is now being mounted as a fundraiser.
“It’s almost like at the time someone had written this script, but they were trying to figure out a way to make people listen to it, and someone said, ‘Why don’t we just make it Superman?’ and everyone thought it was a great idea,’” laughs Peter. “So there’s a lot of wink and nudge to the audience, and us being very aware of what we’re reading.”
Peter says the radio play, co-presented by Snafu Dance and Twisted Theatre, is often unintentionally hilarious now that’s it’s more than 75 years old, and when he was looking for material for a two-night production to raise money for his upcoming tour with another show, Kitt & Jane, it was the perfect opportunity.
“Because I’ve done radio plays before, I know how quickly it can go up; you realize you can do it in two weeks,” says Peter. “Everyone is reading their scripts, so everyone will be onstage reading from music stands.”
Peter first discovered his love for radio plays as a kid; he was a huge Peter Sellers fan and found out the British star of The Pink Panther series also had a variety radio play called The Goon Show in the ‘50s.
“It just blew my mind because it was so funny. And it’s still funny. These were the shows that inspired Monty Python,” he says. “People sometimes dismiss radio because they think it’s cold and uninteresting, but good radio with good scripts can do a hilarious show that doesn’t have to be visual.”
The show features Superman, Batman, his sidekick Robin, and the requisite villains. But, unlike the comic books or superhero films, this version of Superman is a bit more subdued, says Peter.
“Superman is supposed to be, well, super and quite amazing and you assume he’s going to be flying, and plugging erupting volcanoes, and fighting aliens,” he explains, “but being in radio you can’t do any of that, so you basically have some guy reading a script, going, ‘And then Superman did this, and then he did this, and then he did this…’ and it doesn’t seem very magical. At all.”
Peter says the play ends up being similar to a murder mystery, but the cast, which includes his Kitt & Jane co-star Ingrid Hansen, local standup comedians Richard Gauthier and Ryan Bagma, and a host of others, are able to poke fun at the seriousness of the script and its many oversights.
“In the play, Batman goes missing and they don’t do anything like superheroes; they just go looking for clues!” laughs Peter. “And there are so many weird things in the play, like when Batman goes missing Superman and Robin says, ‘Maybe we should look for fingerprints.’ But Batman wears gloves!”
The show’s stage manager, Theodore Sherman, has worked together with Peter before under the banner of Twisted Theatre, and says The Adventures of Superman is a lot of fun and the cast isn’t afraid to play up that humour onstage.
“People can expect to see the actors having fun and playing around with each other,” says Sherman. “It’s a silly Superman adventure that, while I don’t know how it was originally received in the ‘40s, is hard to take the issues they are looking at seriously, which makes us laugh a lot.”
Mostly, Peter and Sherman are excited to bring the radio play format to audiences and celebrate a genre that requires a lot of attention on sound effects and vocal intonation. Peter even suggests that, once audiences are settled into the play, people can close their eyes and just listen.
“Radio plays show that the written word can be funny and it can be interesting,” he says. “We live in a very visual world now where you get to watch something blow up in your face, everything’s in 3-D, and it’s all about the spectacle. Even our jokes now are about physical pranks, and gags, and gross-out humour, but if you really listen to something it can still be immensely powerful and funny.”
The Adventures of Superman
8 pm April 18-19
$10, Intrepid Theatre Club (1609 Blanshard)
snafudance.com