Batman Live is a show/play/circus thingummy.

Plot:
Batman Live tells us the origin story of Batman and his sidekick Robin who both lose their parents in tragic events caused by the criminals that are slowly taking over Gotham City. And when Batman’s biggest foes – the Riddler, the Penguin, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy come together under the leadership of the Joker – Batman and Robin get help from surprising quarters.

Batman Live sounded so extremely promising and I was so looking forward to it, but I have to admit that I was ever so slightly disappointed. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Unfortunately, Batman Live takes its cues mostly from the Schumacher movies. It’s flashy and silly and very much made for kids/family entertainment. And while the movies just have a place in my heart, probably out of pure nostalgia but anyway, I do prefer my Batman to be the darker and actually pretty questionable figure that he is.

But even taking it for what it is, there were just a couple of things that didn’t work so well for me. What actually annoyed me a whole damn lot was that it sounded like the entire dialogue was on tape and that people were lipsynching to it. I was sitting too far from the stage to know whether this was actually the case or whether the sound design was just really bad, but anyway it continuously jolted me out of the performance.

Maybe that was also the reason that there was too much dialogue and plot for me and way too little of the acrobatics. Or maybe the reason was that the acrobats were just a little lackluster. Also, Harley Quinn suffered – she really only was the dummy that was constantly crying after the joker. And the music wasn’t that great either.

But after bitching around, let me tell you what did work: I loved the stage design. Gotham looked great. And they really used that bat-shaped LED wall to great effect. They also did the Batman/Catwoman relationship justice, if in a rather shallow way.

In the end, it’s Batman Live, so your fucking argument is invalid.

Summarising: It’s good. Just not wow.