House of Ideas

If anyone has actually read more than one of these reviews they may note I have a pretty strong tendency to be positive. This doesn’t mean I love every show in the world or would if I saw them but rather the shows I see are entirely self selected. I see what I think I’m going to like and I have a pretty good sense of what I’m going to like.

And I also make no pretence of objectivity. If I am familiar with the work of the playwright and cast and if I “go to a cocktail bar with them after the show” I make no apologies. I would occasionally throw in a “full disclosure” when I wrote for Centerstage but these days I’m my own master, ain’t nobody paying me, ain’t nobody I owe anything to.

So that said believe me when I say I loved Mark Pracht’s House of Ideas, directed by Terry McCabe.

If there’s one medium I love at least as much as theatre it’s comic books, and Pracht’s “Four Color trilogy” has been a compelling, well researched exploration of the history (and tragedy) behind the creatives who made the medium possible and the greed of the (literally Mob connected) bosses who ensured they never truly reaped the rewards.

House of Ideas focuses on the creative partnership between “artist” Jack Kirby (Brian Plocharczyk) and “writer” Stan Lee (Bryan Breau) (the roles are in quotes due to controversy over exactly who did what) which is probably rivaled only by the not entirely dissimilar partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney (spanning a similar time period) as being foundational to postwar Anglo-American popular culture.

As a hardcore comics geek I was largely familiar with this story but it was a thrill to see it played out live, as I imagine it will be even if you have no idea of the background.

Both of these men were larger than life characters with recognizable personae which the two actors conjure beautifully. Kirby’s persona was largely genuine, a hard working, cigar chomping, WWII vet tough kid from Brooklyn, with vigorous blue collar lefty politics and a gloriously gifted creative imagination.

Lee’s persona, as the glad handing, charmingly megalomaniacal ambassador to fans with his legendary catchphrases such as “Excelsior true believers!” was largely constructed as we see him transform from the neurotic, daydreaming literary wannabe of the play’s first act, to the latter in the second.

Much of the tension between the two men came from the nature of their collaboration. Lee and Kirby would plot stories together, Kirby would then draw them, and Lee would fill in the narration and dialogue. To Kirby’s way of thinking, this made him the primary creator of the stories, while Lee, despite his fulsome praise of Kirby’s art, saw himself the same way for contributing to the plots and writing the text.

Together they created the Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man and a host of our modern myths. While these blockbusters generated millions for their greedy publishers, the actual creators eked out a lower middle class existence, subject to their whims.

Women in this world have long been secondary in this boy’s clubs but in this show, Carrie Hardin plays Jack’s tirelessly loving and supportive wife Roz with extraordinary warmth that the audience can feel. The always dependable Kate Black-Spence, back onstage after a long sojourn in film, plays the seemingly less sympathetic Joan Lee, a social climbing British model with expensive tastes who might easily be unlikable but Pracht’s writing and Black-Spence’s performance both reveal her to be equally loving and supportive of her man in her own way. At one point Lee, who wanted to be a literary great, laments that he has spent his life on silly stories for children, Joan counters that he is helping to set children’s expectations for the world, the desire for progress, for justice. While the show arguably has more poignant moments, that’s the only one that made me as a life long lover of this silly nonsense well up with tears.

I haven’t even gotten to some of the other extraordinary supporting turns which often hilariously embody the eccentric characters populating this world in the 1940s, 60s and beyond.

Superheroes are a dream that may thrill us, but the real heroes who walk among us are those who do the dreaming.

The House of Ideas” is running through October 6, 2024, at City Lit Theatre, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, on the second floor of the Edgewater Presbyterian Church.

General admission tickets – $35
Seniors – $30
Students and military – $12

Performance schedule:

Fridays and Saturdays – 7:30 p.m.
Sundays – 3:00 p.m.

Additional performances:
Monday, September 23rd and Monday, September 30th at 7:30 p.m.