Batman, the crime-fighting alter ego of millionaire Bruce Wayne created as a comic strip in 1940, has perhaps never been more iconic after the hip and hyped success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies. But well before those milestones in the Batman story, and even before Tim Burton’s creepier film versions (let’s forget about Joel Schumacher’s corny travesties), there was Batman, a kids’ TV show of the late 1960s. That show ran for 120 lovably campy episodes and then went to syndication.
Until now. Husband and wife team Tori Keenan-Zelt and Steven Koernig concocted an imaginary Episode 121, titled Catfight, and that “lost episode” was brought to blam! pow! life at the Yale Cabaret, from Feb. 5 to Feb. 7.
Directed by Koernig, Catfight gleefully resuscitates the essential silliness of the TV show — which the Batman character took years to live down — puncturing the self-importance of the Dark Knight stylings. Under the camp, there’s a comic revisionism that wants to reshape the masculinity of the latter-day super-hero franchises and the leering sexism of the 1960s sensibility into something more androgynous.
It begins with the amazing, cut-out comic-book set designed by Jean Kim and built by Sean Walters (who performs in the piece as Wayne’s trusted butler Alfred Pennyworth). Its skyscrapers, Batman signal, and askew frames recall many of the TV show’s sets, particularly the villains’ lairs. As Wayne/Batman, Andrew Burnap is a comic delight. His ability to maintain the tight grimace of Adam West and the slightly laconic though precise delivery keeps the show’s mannerisms alive, as does Dylan Frederick’s uncanny resemblance to Burt Ward.
But Frederick’s Robin is not so much kid sidekick as pining love interest — a side to Batman that initially got the comic book in trouble when, in the 1950s, comics were accused of corrupting youth. From that point of view, Robin is thoroughly corrupted. If that’s not enough, the scheme by nemesis Catwoman — Juliana Canfield, simply purrr-fect as the felonious feline — aims to make all the women in the Gotham scholarship pageant act like cats by means of a special weapon. That means Robin has to infiltrate the pageant, gowned and be-wigged. And, holy cross-dressing criminals! Catwoman’s endearingly thuggish henchmen Mi (Sebastian Arboleda) and Yow (Jonathan Higginbotham) show up as women too!
Mi’s and Yow’s interpretive poem-dance is one of the shows high points. It simply has no business being as good as it is, suddenly stealing the show from the masked marauders. With page-boy wigs, print dresses, and skirts and tops dating from the days of Holly Golightly, the dorkish duo suddenly become graceful, engaging, even lyrical. Meanwhile, Batman, briefly trussed up by Catwoman, escapes with the help of the ever-unflappable Alfred and foils the perfidy at the pageant.
Catfight relishes its campy homoeroticism, but also maintains the aspect of West’s Batman that made the show safe for us kids: Batman and Robin seem not to have discovered sex, though here, Robin is eager to be discovered. In drag, he catches the eye of earnestly repressed Commissioner Gordon (George Hampe), who is perhaps overly fond of doing the nails of his daughter, Barbara (Brontë England-Nelson).
As Barbara, England-Nelson undergoes the most transformations: first, into her hilarious cat routine — she’s one of the women who falls under Catwoman’s sonic spell — then to her alter-ego Batgirl, which she trades to become Robin. As with cross-dressing in Shakespeare’s comedies, the Batman and Batgirl-as-Robin dynamic might lead to hetero coupling masquerading as same-sex sex. Which might just be a way of saying that Robin makes a better Batgirl and Batgirl a better Robin.
Alexae Visel’s enhanced spandex costumes and Alyssa Best’s comic-book lighting have fun with the colorful renderings of the show. Batman’s and Catwoman’s body suits seem rather authentic, while Robin’s crime-fighting get-up is even sillier than the show’s. Many fun bits from Batman lore adorn Koernig and Keenan-Zelt’s creation as well: the stage Irish brogue of Chief O’Hara (a talking cut-out) and the inevitable rope-gripping walk up a side of a building. And of course there’s the frenetic fisticuffs — ka-pow! — choreographed by Julian Elijah Martinez.
The main upshot of Catfight is that women are people too, despite Robin’s misogynist jibing. Catwoman wants to sabotage the pageant, much as actual feminists did to the 1968 Miss America Pageant, and Batgirl is clearly the brainiest crime-fighter on the stage. But in Batman, boys will be boys, and sometimes girls, and somewhere in the mixed-up mayhem is the possibility that it’s all a matter of playing dress-up, with everyone vying for the role that, as West’s Batman used to say regularly, “fits like my glove.”
This Friday, Feb. 13, the Yale Cabaret hosts its third annual drag show. It is sold out, but the wait list opens at the door an hour before the performance.