Comic book tale told at length

BATMAN LIVE, Manchester Arena
WATCH the first half of this lavish evening and you might be a little concerned that for a show about Batman, he doesn’t appear all that much.

Bruce Wayne is there; Commissioner Gordon turns up briefly and Penguin and the other arch villains pollute the vast stage too. But mainly you might be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into a circus.

Actually that isn’t too far a stretch: the act is partly set in a circus, so trapeze artists and ball-balancers and clowns and the rest aren’t unexpected. But they are unexpected at the length we get them.

This is the only thing that makes this two hours in comic-book land less than terrific. What we forget when we read a comic book is that the abbreviated form gets through fairly complicated stuff in a few pictures and relatively few words. Stretch one of these stories to fill two hours and you have to fill the time with other things...

So while the lighting, the costumes, the huge set, the sound and yes, the Gordon Murray-designed Batmobile are deeply impressive, the story has long periods of circus performance, dancing filler and prancing about that add nothing to the story and often just get in the way.

When Batman finally confronts the Joker in the (superior) second half, for instance, the latter’s men form a V-shaped phalanx with sticks to beat him to a pulp... then proceed to do a sort of martial stick-waving display while he stands for ages, watching them.

But what isn’t in doubt is the quality of the visuals. The design team has the advantage of a back video wall that must be 25ft high and 50ft wide, and superbly bright and clear. On this wall are projected between-scenes comic book pages, flipping one by one until a frame pulls into view and expands to fill the wall, becoming the backdrop for the scene.

Such is the wonder of computer graphics, these images move and have perspective: when we approach Wayne Manor or the Askham Asylum, we go up the steps, through the doors and along the corridors. It’s a terrific effect and the show’s highlight — though even this is over-extended, as the video version of the Batmobile speeds across town.

Shame the story can’t quite live up to the technology, but the 4,000-strong virtually packed-out arena crowd loved it.