The Dark Knight Triumphant in Classic Cooney Farce
It’s hard to know what was going through Batman’s head when he accepted the lead in the much-anticipated revival of Run For Your Wife! at the Old Gotham Playhouse.
It had all started one evening at a benefit dinner for the Wayne Foundation. No one was too surprised when the event was gatecrashed by The Riddler; as usual, he’d been unable to resist pre-empting his appearance in a series of transparent and unfunny brain-teasers posted on riddlemethis.com. As soon as he arrived, bursting from a suspiciously large cake in a flurry of puns, the caped crusader rappelled down from a skylight and beat him yet more senseless before he could effect the advertised kidnapping. The target, Sir Marmaduke Pfogg (no relation), the famous theatre director fresh from a series of triumphs in Londinium’s West End, was quick to offer Batman both his profound gratitude and the lead in his new play.
As it was raining out and he was facing an elaborate series of high-altitude swoops and at least one somersault through a plate-glass window, in order to return to Bruce Wayne’s office on the 915th floor to change out of his bulky night-vision suit, Batman decided to accept Pfogg’s offer of a drink. Trailing his enormous, scissoring hang-glider wings, he repaired awkwardly to the cocktail bar. ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having,’ he rasped to the flamboyant director as the pair perched themselves on tall stools and surveyed the laminated bill of fare.
‘Two Cocksucking Cowboys,’ Pfogg barked at the barman, who plonked a folded napkin and dish of complimentary nuts before the dark knight.
‘Listen, Pfogg,’ said Batman, maintaining his threatening croak even as he suavely flipped cashews into his mouth. ‘Why would I want to do Run For Your Wife!?’, and then, after a suitably dramatic pause, ‘I’m Batman.’
The drinks arrived and Batman sipped daintily, yet menacingly, through a long, spiralling straw.
‘I know you are,’ said Pfogg, placing a reassuring paw on Batman’s gloved and clenched fist. ‘But I think you can be so much more.’
The crusader looked unconvinced. Pfogg leaned in closer. ‘You saw what I did with the Green Lantern in Not Now, Darling.’
Batman allowed himself a tight smile. Darling had been a smash. ‘In brightest day, in blackest night…get ready to split your sides!!!’ had screamed the headlines. ‘Let those who worship evil’s might, watch this crazy farce take flight!!!’ The Lantern had stayed pretty much on-script until the finale, only using his power ring to sort out a mix-up with the hotel reservations. Equally crowdpleasing was The Flash in No Sex Please, We’re British; the various near-miss entrances and exits had never been executed with such lightning speed. And at the Justice League AGM, they were still talking about The Elongated Man’s across-the-drawing-room brassiere removal in Move Over, Mrs Markham, Pfogg’s most recent West End hit (‘Season stre-e-e-e-e-e-etched to record twentieth week!!!’). Maybe a spell creeping the boards wasn’t such a bad idea. The crowds had loved him that time he’d run for mayor against The Penguin (laughably but memorably dramatised in ‘Hizzoner, Dizzoner’).
‘All right, ya got me,’ hissed Batman, slamming down his fellatio-themed beverage and firing a bathook into the ceiling. ‘See you at rehearsals.’ And with that, he shot upwards and was gone, leaving his agent to sort out the details.
***
In order to comply with Equity regulations, Batman needed to go through at least the motions of an audition. He chose to recite the classic Two Ronnies ‘Fork Handles’ sketch, playing both parts in a hissed and threatening manner that evinced little humour and led the seen-it-all stagehands in the flies to pinch their noses and recall The Atom’s disastrous Lear (the performance itself was fine, but it was only visible to one audience member at a time, hunched over a microscope for a ‘bum-numbing five hours’ – The Bugle.)
The six-week rehearsal period was constantly disrupted by the lead actor’s sudden bathook-assisted departures, supposedly to tackle some crime-related emergency, but which, more and more, the supporting cast chose to read as stage fright. Batman at first seemed miscast in the role of the cockney cabbie with ‘two wives, two lives and a very precise schedule for juggling them both’, his massive cape repeatedly getting caught in the doors of the adjoining hotel rooms, and his incessant harshly growled ad-libs (‘Bigamy is a sickness…and I’m the cure!’) and relentless beating of the gay neighbour, seemingly at odds with the light frothy tone of Ray Cooney’s ‘naughty but nice’ classic. But the scene where he cavorted in nothing but cowl and boxers was a winner, and helped to offset some mystifying references to ‘Aunt Harriet’ in the Act II tour de force with the ice bucket.
Throughout these rehearsals, which were plagued by sneak attacks by various supervillains that repeatedly resulted in the mise-en-scène deteriorating into a series of lengthy fistfights, Pfogg encouraged the dark knight to take part in ‘trust exercises’ with the rest of the company. Batman’s standard response was to fling two capsules of knockout gas into the orchestra pit; summon a huge tank-like vehicle to the stage door; hurl himself through the shattering French doors; and repair to the prow of the Chrysler building, where he would stand broodingly, his billowing cape whipping against the cold Gotham night as he recited, over and over, the speech about the mix-up with the scanty panties. The pressure of the role, not to mention the ongoing raids on the Gotham Mint by The Clock King (incongruously teamed with Olga) resulted in frequent, frustrating absences. No one was convinced the day a ‘Batman’ who was clearly an elderly man with a dapper moustache much like that worn by millionaire Bruce Wayne’s manservant turned up, sporting an even less convincing cockney accent than usual.
But somehow, come opening night, spirits were riding high. For the post-dress cast party, Batman had gassed the entire company and transported them, in the Batcopter, to his vast subterranean lair for a catered piss-up. The evening had ended with the host regaling his co-stars with several violent theatrical anecdotes, while the two actresses who played the roles of his nymphomaniac wives shot up and down on the Batpoles sans underpants.
‘Break a leg, everyone,’ toasted Pfogg, raising high a freshly shaken Buttfucking Bellboy, but by the time the curtain fell, two hours later, the only fractures sustained were those of three people in the front row and an unconscious Two-Face, whose surprise appearance in Act III had resulted in the show’s biggest laughs as he extemporised a new scene playing two separate husbands simultaneously. Applause for the actual cast members was muted and even the spray of flowers presented to a noticeably embarrassed Batman during the curtain call left a bitter aftertaste. Batman realised they were from Louie the Lilac just seconds before they exploded, bringing down what little of the scenery remained after the fight.
In the bar afterwards, Gordon and O’Hara were putting a brave face on it, but the Caped Crusader, clutching a highball and taking small hesitant drags on a cigarette, could read it on their faces.
‘This came for you,’ said the Commissioner, handing Batman a folded note. ‘It’s from Egghead.’
‘Another threat to flood the city with albumen?’ snarled the dark knight.
‘I’m afraid he was reviewing tonight’s show for the Times,’ said Gordon. ‘This is what he’ll be filing in the first edition.’
Batman raised it to his cowl and by the time he’d finished reading the notice, which made full use of the author’s penchant for egg puns, his face was taut with fury.
‘“No Bernard Cribbins”, am I?’ he thundered. ‘I’ll show him whose performance is “a badly timed yolk”!’
But it was too late. By the time the Times hit the newsstands, the city’s criminals would all be laughing at him. Run For Your Wife! had been a mistake, Batman could see that now. He needed to put it behind him, re-assert his authority, show the scum on the streets who’s boss. First thing in the morning, he’d call Pfogg and say yes to Nunsense.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). He is currently directing new episodes of ABCTV's ‘The Librarians’.
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