Just got back from seeing a production of this show in Seattle. I hadn’t heard about it until they announced they were doing it here, but apparently it debuted in New York a few years ago and it’s proven quite popular in the theatre world. It’s a pretty interesting way of taking a piece of pop-culture ephemera and using it as a launching point to look at the human condition and our drive to persevere in a world that’s stacked against us.
The first act opens a few months after a vaguely-defined global nuclear catastrophe that has wiped out over 99% of the US population and left the survivors scattered in the wilderness far from the fallout zones. In between trying to figure out if anyone’s seen their loved ones and what’s going on in the rest of the world, they try and keep themselves sane by reminiscing about the plot of “Cape Feare” (the episode where Sideshow Bob gets out of jail and the family flees to Terror Lake to hide from him). The second act brings us to seven years later, where the survivors have become a theatre troupe performing a reenactment of the episode (along with commercials and pop music medleys) in exchange for necessities in a world where things like Diet Coke and batteries are becoming increasingly rare. The third act, 75 years after that, shows us a rendition of Cape Feare which generations of oral tradition, half-remembered plot points, and interpolation have produced an operatic morality play as much about the disaster as it is about the Simpsons, where Sideshow Bob has been replaced by a cannibalistic Mr. Burns in Joker makeup with Itchy and Scratchy as his murderous sidekicks.
All in all, it’s a pretty solid mix of funny and thought-provoking - more so than I would have expected from a play based on a TV episode best remembered for a man stepping on rakes over and over again. For those who haven’t seen it, see it if you get the opportunity. For those who have - what did you think?
I saw it in Washington DC last year or so, and I thought it was amazing. I’m a Simpsons fan, but the show is only peripherally about them. It’s about culture and how we create it out of memory and emotion – what really matters, and what gets left behind. Dramatically, it’s very tightly written; each act sets its scene, makes its point, and moves on, investing the audience in the characters just enough to care about them, while recognizing that what really matters are the messages they’re carrying. It’s a phenomenal show.
Wow, I’d never heard of this at all. I was going to ask how they possibly worked out the licensing rights, but according to Wikipedia the play’s lawyers assured them it was fair use…
Never heard of it, but it sounds so much like Riddley Walker I wonder if it’s an “homage” or just directly derivative.
Hoban’s award-winning novel has been produced as a play several times. One of the major themes is how the descendants of survivors of nuclear war try to recreate their culture through plays, and their memory of the world that was is distorted.
I saw this in NYC when it premiered at Playwrights Horizons and I too thought it was a brilliantly executed piece about how culture and storytelling is so important to humanity. I thought it was really interesting how something as insignificant as a random Simpsons episode could get passed down through generations of oral storytelling to become this operatic piece of high art.
It actually mad me sad at the end, as the world had become such an awful place that it colored and corrupted stuff like Itchy and Scratchy which are meant to be wholly frivolous.
At ACT in San Francisco, they commissioned special “D’oh-nuts” for halftime – orange/vanilla donut with raspberry/beer glaze. Total disappointment – I couldn’t taste any of those 4 flavors. Just tasted like regular donut. ACT also arranged to have the original Cape Fear Simpsons episode to be re-aired (late night syndication), so we could all re-familiarize ourselves with it before seeing the show. I also took the backstage tour. Cool.
And yet, it surprised me and actually kind of moved me how it ended on an optimistic note. Bart’s monologue at the end,sung to the tune of “He Is An Englishman”, is downright inspiring (quoting from the script here, which I found on Kindle, hope this excerpt isn’t too long for copyright purposes);
[QUOTE=Bart Simpson]
And now that I’ve lost everything
Now that everyone I love is gone
All I have left is everything
The river carries me on
Though every fear is facing me
And I do not know what next will be
And I cannot know what next I’ll see
I’m running forward anyway
I’m not afraid to meet the day
The world is full of everything
I’m a boy who could be anything
And now I will do everything
The whole world unfurls before me
A great adventure lies before me
I’m reaching out for anything
I’m calling out to everything
There’s nothing I’m afraid to be
The world is new and glittery
I run to meet it hopefully
Love never dies in memory
And I will meet life gloriously
[/QUOTE]
Even when you’ve lost everything you’ve ever known and loved, that which is gone still lives on as long as you remember it, and there’s an entire world of possibilities out there just waiting for you. It’s definitely the kind of message that the society in the play would need, and it’s just as inspiring today, here and now.