"SuperYou" is Skylight’s Super-Sized Musical about Self-Worth
Photo by Mark Frohna.
It turns out, even superheroes get the blues. That is what happened to Lourds Lane, the musical child prodigy-turned rock star who found that one day she couldn’t get out of bed, due to a series of debilitating personal losses. Unsurprisingly, the accomplished pianist and violinist rediscovered her power through music. She was inspired to get up and try again after listening to a song in her playlist that touched her. The twist is, the encouraging tune was a song that she, herself, had written.
Discovering the ability to not only heal people through music, but to heal herself through her own creative pursuits, Lane was motivated to explore a whole new realm of composition and performance – musical theater. Her newfound mantra, “rise up and blast through,” basically sums up the tagline, origin story, theme, and the bulk of the plot of SuperYou, Lane’s power-ballad stuffed take on confidence and positivity, featuring a cast of social misfits, dysfunctional family members, and comic book heroines.
After several readings, concerts, workshops, and a pre-COVID scheduled engagement on Broadway, the show is enjoying its out-of-town tryout in Milwaukee before transferring to London’s West End. A last-minute replacement for another title in Skylight Music Theatre’s season, a full production of SuperYou opened in the Cabot Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center on May 31. Running through through June 18, it is also Skylight’s offering in the World Premiere Wisconsin festival.
Photo by Mark Frohna.
From the first blinding sunburst of lighting effects and the opening chords in the hard rocking, action-packed opening number, SuperYou is super-sized. Everything about the show is all-in on a massive scale, similar to Skylight’s previous season finale, Dennis DeYoung’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Just how big is it? Well. . .
The cast is awash in big Broadway talent.
It is unusual to see a Skylight production that features eight Equity cast members, and it is even more unusual to have an ensemble with so many current Broadway credits on their resumes. It is revelatory to watch a musical where every role feels like it was filled with the absolute best person for the part. The cast’s abilities, energy, precision and charisma radiate from the stage in a way that even national tours rarely capture.
As the lead, Kennedy Caughell is a powerhouse, bringing Katie’s vulnerability, self-doubt, determination and desperation to life onstage as she navigates relationships with her brother, mother, boyfriend and her artistic side. Her agile singing voice was made for ballads — it slips easily above the scale, controlled, but with a pop-star’s edge, similar to Alanis Morissette.
Photo by Mark Frohna.
As her younger self, Serena Parrish is also stunning. The teen performer, who has already racked up plenty of professional credits, throws herself into challenging choreography, charges fearlessly at Katie’s nemesis Mi Roar, and has little trouble channeling her character the naive and awkward high school student. Her voice is also clear and strong.
The voices and movement are extraordinary.
Director/choreographer Joann M. Hunter does a fantastic job of integrating dance throughout the show, creating a interesting cipher out of Katie’s mother (Milwaukee native Melissa Anderson) who communicates almost completely through ballet-adjacent movement. The other silent character, Mi Roar (Blake Zelesnikar), is thoroughly menacing while gracefully pirouetting and lunging across the stage.
In addition to many soul-searching solos for Katie, each superheroine has their own showcase song, which they nail while strutting their stuff. Taken together, the cast puts out a wall of intricately woven sound that pleasantly overwhelms the Cabot.
The songs seriously rock.
As a lifelong professional musician, Lourdes Lane has a huge advantage over many musical theater composers – she has been onstage for years, selling her own music and lyrics to audiences and clocking the impact of her songs. As a result, Lane has the ability to construct compelling, hummable melodies with clever lyrics in many different styles. Her skill and versatility is apparent just a few numbers into the show. There are no wonky rhymes or funky key changes in this score. Like her superheroines, Lane’s music is ambitious, confident and authentic.
The set is enormous. It takes on a life of its own.
Cell phones, selfies, texting, and TikTok are an inescapable part of our lives and as a result, plays and musicals set in the present are challenged to include them as part of the storytelling. SuperYou does this with three large screens that fill up alternating blocks of the set.
In addition to photos, videos, and internet chats, the screens also display sets that look hand-drawn on the blue lined notebook paper of an aspiring artist, or the coffee stained napkin of a cafe.
Finally they become the (sometimes animated) panels of comic books, filled with primary color illustrations of heroes and villains, confrontations and transformations, drawn by artists Benjamin Goetz and Erik Teague. The set’s electrifying design by Anna Louizos captures and elevates the themes of the musical while keeping the show moving at lightning speed.
The IDEAS are BIG.
SuperYou is not a story about one person struggling with fear and self-doubt, it’s about everyone battling their inner demons and learning how to rise above adversity. Specifically it’s about people who feel marginalized making bold choices to take up space, be authentic, turn their quirks into their strengths, use their voices and talent to be creative and relentlessly shine their light in the world. The musical numbers return to these big ideas relentlessly, but also to great effect – it’s hard to walk out of the theater and not feel inspired.
The show is overflowing with plot.
A lot happens in SuperYou, with several large jumps forward in time, making the scope of the story almost epic. (Spoilers ahead, TWs) Early scenes include reports of domestic abuse and schoolyard bullies. Later there are cartooning contests, a car accident, alcoholism, a heart attack, hospitalized parents, whirlwind romances, viral videos, power outages, recording contracts, movie deals, school reunions, rehab, and even a hoedown. The plot twists and reversals come flying at the audience at a pace that only a comic book heroine could keep up with.
Seriously, it’s a lot.
Photo by Mark Frohna.
The representation is a huge step forward.
Drawing from a canon dominated by old white straight guys, some theaters have struggled to embrace calls for gender parity, ethnic diversity and inclusion. This production of SuperYou blows up that problem. Here the LGBTQ+ community takes center stage – characters and cast members are openly gay, non-binary, and trans – not as huge plot points, simply as kick-ass human beings.
And a whole range of superheroines are clearly in charge, both onstage and behind-the-scenes, with women filling the positions of author/composer, director and choreographer, associate director, scenic designer, costume designer, and production stage manager. It also helps that the female main character aces the Bechdel test. Katie doesn’t get married in the end — instead she battles her own insecurities and wins. Revolutionary.
SuperYou is just short of superlative.
All of these elements add up to a technically astounding show that’s full of feel-good messages, but like the cartoons young Katie draws for protection, SuperYou remains somewhat surreal and superficial. The musical is full of the forces of GOOD and EVIL duking it out, with little question about who will triumph, leaving the Katies as the only three-dimensional characters in the story.
It’s easy to cheer for the woman who needs to stand up for herself and to celebrate when she does, but it’s hard to feel much more than that. Perhaps before the show lands in London, the comic book artist can add some shades of gray to her tale.