Qui Nguyen's "Men of Steel" tosses that duality into the ring for an ultimate fighting championship between kitsch and art. The winner? Anyone lucky enough to catch Theater Wit's bold and breathtaking production of Nguyen's devilishly clever and disturbing parable.
Nguyen's story concerns a bullied young man who grows up to be Captain Justice, an avenger bent on -- well, you know. Justice is married to an investigative reporter, Helen, and has a hot female sidekick in Liberty Lady. He also has a friend from his youth, Maelstrom, who isn't quite what he appears to be, although Maelstrom (like Batman) lost his father to crime and is also determined to clean up the streets.
When Justice starts kicking rumps and taking names at an international level, he inspires a slew of imitators, including "Los Hermanos Manos," a pair of wannabe crime fighters (played to the lovable-loser hilt by Bryson Engelen and Edgar Miguel Sanchez) who fall prey to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings.
The plot unfolds in a series of flashbacks and serial episodes, interspersed with mind-boggling and bone-jarring stage combat (courtesy of Kevin Murphy and Tony Sancho) and hilarious video vignettes, including one featuring Lego versions of Captain Justice, Liberty Lady, the arch-villain Hooded Menace, and a crack team of Norwegian ninjas. But Nguyen has crafted something far more challenging than a brilliant send-up of superhero tropes. Within the melange of references to everything from "The Incredibles" to "Fight Club," Nguyen embeds rich nuggets of thought on life in a post-9/11 world obsessed with vengeance.
When another character accuses him of "terrorizing the people," Captain Justice retorts "And I'm keeping them safe." But that glorified notion of security comes at a terrible price.
But fear not, citizen. This isn't a dreary polemic. Director Jeremy Wechsler finesses the more-complicated-than-it-seems material with a great deal of nuance, though a certain level of plot exhaustion does creep in toward the end. Robert McLean's anguished Justice is outstanding as a man of extraordinary powers and all-too-ordinary emotional responses. David Roby as Bryant the Indestructible, a young man who feels no pain and hence allows others to re-enact their brutal revenge fantasies on him, is downright haunting.
But there are many moments in this show that had me laughing harder than anything I've seen in months (for example, an early fight against the overly talkative villain "the Mole," featuring the latter's long tail as both a weapon and a jump rope). Sam Poretta's efficient bi-level modular set, Jeremy Getz's expressionistic lighting (this isn't a show for the strobe-phobic), and Mikhail Fiksel's kick-out-the-jams original music all add up to an exhilarating, mind-bending voyage into the dark side of the unfettered -- and insufficiently reflective -- superpower syndrome.
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'Men of Steel'
Where: Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont Ave.
When: Through Oct. 28
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $25 at 773-327-5252
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
