It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's....

I've loved the score for the 1966 Broadway musical SUPERMAN since I was a teenager with its smashing music & lyrics by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams and some of the best orchestrations (by Eddie Sauter) of the period.

Now Encores has brought the show back in high style for six performances and I sat there with a happy grin on my face from start to finish.

Ed Watts, who spent most of Kathie Lee Gifford's musical SCANDALOUS in a state of undress, puts his muscular frame and booming voice to much better use as Superman/Clark Kent. In Act Two, when he has lost the respect of the citizens of Metropolis, Superman sits in his apartment eating peanut butter out of the jar and sings of his sadness as he distractedly bends a standard lamp in half.

I've always adored Patricia Marand's singing as Lois Lane on the original cast album so I was delighted to discover the wonderful Jenny Powers who is as good if not better performing the title song and "What I've Always Wanted" and "We Don't Matter at All".

 Ali Mauzey, on a break from playing Glinda in WICKED, takes the role created by Linda Lavin who introduced the show's hit song "You've Got Possibilities", and was the audience favourite.

 Best of all were two time Tony nominee David Pittu as the mad scientist Abner Sedgewick, looking disturbingly like Zoe Caldwell, and my darling Will Swenson as scumbag reporter Max Mencken.
Will had the unenviable task of following original top-billed star Jack Cassidy but he tore into the role like a hungry tiger and mined any and every comic possibility. The pair's duet "You've Got What I Need" was a good, old fashioned showstopper.

 I couldn't have liked it more.