As cushy executives in Hollywood studios were sat making up their minds which of our favourite DC/Marvel comics could be transformed into this year’s predictable multi-million dollar movie franchise, Tom Corradini was busy developing his own strange idea. What would happen if the stories of The Hulk, The Thing, Thor, Batman, Spiderman and the Italian heroine Bedelia, were crammed into a fifty-minute high jinx one-man performance? And what if – while telling their stories – the single performer were to try and crack jokes?
It would not have been surprising if Corradini’s programme fell a little short of its ambitious intentions. As it transpires, he falls a little more than a little short. At the end of its fifty minutes, Superheroes’ audience is left feeling jilted: we have not learnt anything about these superheroes we didn’t already know from comics or films. Sacrificing intelligence for speed, Corradini’s sense of humour is too reductive. Even for someone who doesn’t profess herself a superhero expert, the simplifications went too far (“No. He definitely gets bit by a spider at some point.”)
Instead all Corradini gives us properly is an insight into his own personality. To be fair to him, as personalities go, his is not altogether displeasing to watch. A positive whirlwind of energy, he leaps and capers around the stage, sustaining a two hundred per cent, full-throttle, sweat exploding performance. He engages his small audiences with a fun, bold flirtatiousness rarely seen on this side of the Channel and at the end he calls up everyone who participates to bow with him: he seems like a great guy.
Sometimes a fun person can be enjoyable to watch in and of themselves, but it is easier to do so if they counterpart their watchability with some interest. Corradini has plenty of material to work with. There are tens of schizoid superheroes – hundreds of mental villains – to be made fun of. All he needs is to get a writer on board and to sort out what he’s trying to say.
