Batman to stun steel city

The power relationship between public relations people hired to promote something and the journalists they want to write about it is an interesting one.

If they have a big star we really want to interview and feel you would like to read about, they hold all the aces.

If, however, they have something that we aren’t particularly desperate to write about, then we can assume our poker face.

Then there’s something like Batman Live, a stage show touring the UK’s biggest arenas.

On the one hand, the publicists have some impressive names attached to the project, they have a stage show that they say will blow the socks off anyone that sees it and, obviously, they have Batman. However, the ace in our hand is Spiderman.

In case you haven’t read, Julie Taymor, the woman who directed the multi-award winning The Lion King, has directed on Broadway a musical version of Spiderman, with U2 composing the score. The production has been labelled the most expensive Broadway flop, by some margin, in history and the critics have been at their most savage with the show. It appears to be selling tickets only to disaster tourists who want to witness a car crash first hand.

The fact that the web-slinging superhero’s stage show has failed so epically, so totally, so disastrously, on Broadway, is the one card that means I might win this hand and be able to make the PR people for Batman Live cater to my whim.

Then I arrive in London for the launch of the arena show and quickly realise I am very wrong. The ace I thought I had in my hand is at best a three of clubs. The pecking order is quickly established and, with journalists from around Europe and the rest of the world, TV stations, radio, and all other media outlets here for the launch, it becomes clear that it doesn’t matter how good I thought my hand was, their Batman beats everything. If the launch is anything to judge this show by it is going to be staggering – and it comes to Sheffield next week.

Even so, when I finally get a chance to sit down and talk to the writer, Allan Heinberg, the first question that needs addressing is the awkwardness of launching a superhero stage show in these times.

Normally “these times” refers to the straitened financial era in which we find ourselves, today it means PS – Post Spiderman.

“I’m a big fan of everyone involved with Spiderman and I was really intrigued to see how they were going to make the transition from the page to the stage,” says Heinberg.

“I started working on Batman Live in November last year and the whole creative team went to see a preview of Spiderman in December. It was really instructive. It’s a real challenge to take what is magical and amazing about superheroes and put that on stage.”

Heinberg is an American screenwriter who cut his teeth on the show Party of Five, went on to write comic books for DC and has written for shows including Gilmore Girls and Sex and the City. Very Hollywood, much like the Batman Live launch, he distances his show from the Spiderman debacle with impressive ease.

“The way the Spiderman team did their show informed us because we want to make Batman unique and give the audience an experience they can’t get anywhere else,” he says.

“We learned a lot from seeing Spiderman and the two shows are a very different prospect. Theirs is a musical, while ours is a stage show. Theirs is presented on a proscenium arch while ours is on a thrust stage in an arena space.

“Look, people are going to approach Batman Live with Spiderman in their minds there’s nothing we can really do about that. We just have to focus on the story we’re trying to tell and deliver it as powerfully as possible.”

If it sounds like Heinberg is being combative, he isn’t. He is genuinely passionate about the project on which he is working. If the passion of the other creatives on the show matches his – and lives up to the razzle dazzle on show at the London launch, Yorkshire audiences are likely to be impressed when Batman Live arrives in Sheffield.

Back to the London launch. Hundreds of journalists gather in the hall of a central London exhibition centre. A deafening noise introduces the creative team to the stage.

There’s stage designer Es Devlin, who has also designed tours for Lady Gaga, Kanye West and Take That.

There’s the creative director Anthony Van Laast, who has choreographed Mamma Mia!, Sister Act and who worked on the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie.

Everyone who comes to the stage to talk about the show knows their onions. People around me listen patiently, clearly impressed by the spectacle – all the creatives talking about the show on their head microphones, are well drilled, slick.

But there’s something missing.

The speeches over, another rumble of sound sweeps through the centre, announcing that the thing that has been missing from the launch, the thing that has brought journalists from around the world to London, is about to arrive. Batman.

We know it’s just a guy in a suit. We know it’s not even a famous guy in the suit. But the effect of Batman walking into the room is really quite something. The cameras flash and everyone strains to get a good look.

It’s this effect that the creators of the show are banking on in bringing his story to the stage and arenas around the UK, Europe and America.

Later on, after the dazzle of the launch in a quieter room, Heinberg tries to explain the effect of the Caped Crusader. “He’s the world’s most relatable superhero. He loses everything in a deeply difficult emotional blow and yet he strives to become his best self and labours on the behalf of others,” he says.

Heinberg’s wrong, of course. The reason we love Batman is very simple – it’s because he is very cool and, unlike clean cut superheroes like Spidey and Superman, is also a little bit dangerous.

Created by DC Comics’ Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939, Batman has fascinated millions since. His alter-ego is Bruce Wayne, a multi-millionaire playboy who witnessed the murder of his parents as a boy and swore his life to avenge them by hunting down the sorts of criminals at whose hands his parents were killed.

Over the years the Batman, who patrols Gotham City, inspired villains like Catwoman, the Penguin, Two Face and the almost iconic as the hero of the story, the Joker. Since 1939 he has been brought to life for millions of fans in various guises, from the ker-pow campery of the Adam West starring TV show of the 60s to the Christopher Nolan rebirth of a dark and brooding hero of recent years.

Heinberg considers himself a fan when it comes to comics and to the Batman – he wants to see the character done justice when he comes to the stage.

“Yes, it’s a huge spectacle and it’s going to be an amazing show with pyrotechnics and explosions, but at its heart we’re trying to deliver a really strong story and tell that as powerfully as possible,” he says.

“For some kids, this will be the first time they meet Batman and that’s all I’m thinking about, making sure I respect the tradition and that those kids come away loving the character as much as I do.”

Everyone involved is keen to emphasise that the story is at the heart of what looks like an explosive stage show, but bringing Batman Live to the stage is a huge technical challenge.

Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena – the show comes to the North before it gets to London – has built an enormous 100ft by 60ft stage on which a model of Gotham City has been built. A 130ft screen will play out sections of the story on film and a cast of almost 50, featuring circus performers and acrobats will tell the story.

And, of course, there’s the Batmobile.

Our hero’s car of choice is almost as iconic as his outfit.

Further evidence that the technicians working on the show are at the top of their game comes from the fact that Gordon Murray, a designer of Formula One cars, is the man behind the Batmobile.

Anthony Van Laast explained that from the moment the audience walk into Sheffield Arena, they will be thrust into Batman’s world, with helicopters flying above and Gotham brought to life in front of them.

“Nothing like this has been done before,” he says.

Maybe this kind of excitement was on show from the creatives behind the Spiderman stage show and maybe the PR people for Batman Live have done a job on me.

But leaving the launch I find myself thinking, “Holy stage show, that looks good.”

Batman Live, Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield, August 10-14. Tickets 0114 256 5656.