Theater: Paper Cutups

It's a Bird . . . It's a Plane . . . It's SUPERMAN is an amiable mediocrity of a musical, capable only of inspiring benign indifference.

The characters are paper cutups, and the story line consists of anecdotal blackouts. Once the red-and-blue personality of Superman/Clark Kent (Bob Holiday) is crayoned in, he has no place to go but up; unfortunately, his numerous nights via an illusion-defying shiny steel wire give no perceptible lift to the evening.

As Kent, reporter for the Daily Planet, Superman is heckled by a Winchellesque gossipist with an ego bigger than

Superman's. Jack Cassidy plays the role with preening self-adoration, and cuts some old vaudeville song-and-dance routines right down to their knees for the supplest satire in the show. But Superman's chief foe is a mad scientist and perennial Nobel Prize dropout: "I've bought ten tickets to Stockholm." Played by Michael O'Sullivan in his best witch-minus-broomstick style, the scientist seeks revenge by attempting to destroy the symbol of goodness in Metropolis. He brain-shrinks Superman (a difficult feat) with the suggestion that being rocketed out from the exploding planet Krypton as a child has left him with a rejection trauma that demands the compensatory adulation of millions.

For a moment, Superman fears that he cannot fly, which would leave the show with no visible means of locomotion, since the dance numbers are few and feeble and the music forgettable. In the end, right and good prevail, though not to the hearty horselaughs that Superman's arch-minded book-bunglers intended. George S. Kaufman once dismissed theatrical satire as "what closes Saturday night." He did not foresee a day when it would run amuck.