Poor Super Man: A Play with Captions

by Brad Fraser By

Poor Super Man is "one of the top ten plays of the year," according to Time magazine. "An unflaggingly witty and often moving slice of life . . . Poor Super Man explodes on to the stage like a bold comic strip, complete with snappy captions and hard, bright, witty dialogue," writes the Edmonton Journal.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Queer, Canada, LGBT, Read For School

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 1995

Reviews

[Carac Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best contemporary Canadian plays ever written. The summer it played at Canadian Stage I saw it five times. I've read and reread the script and I loved the movie adaption.

Fraser's theater is vibrant and alive. His scenes are short and fast like TV. The action is angry and desperate like a video game. The dialogue is punchy and wry like a comic book. But the overall effect is undeniably theatrical.

Projected captions were used in stage plays before this but never as effectively. The characters are sadly beautiful. Their story is true and truly heartbreaking.

C

[Sam Goodale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up next from Dr. Robert G. May: Gay sex and Superman metaphors.

When I was a kid, I used to think I was Spider-Man. Not in the way you fantasize about being Spider-Man or pretend to be Spider-Man; I thought I was the dude's actual brother. I used to climb up the slide at playgrounds and marvel at my proficiency—surely that meant I was related to Spider-Man! It'd only be a matter of time before I started shooting webs out of my hands and saving all the world.

I sit here today and regret to inform you that I am, in fact, not Spider-Man. Nor am I a superhero at all. I'm just a man, not super, not spider. I think my experience was a pretty common one amongst men; we believe ourselves to be extraordinary only to find out we are completely ordinary. This realization is the most heartbreaking experience boys go through while growing up. Sam, you're not Spider-Man, you can't leap your problems in a single bound, and you don't always do the right thing. You're Peter Parker without being Spider-Man.

I don't remember when Spider-Man died, but this play made me experience it all over again. It's as beautiful as it is tragic. Hope proliferates, then it's crushed. The love between the men in this play is so moving, so personally evocative; it transports me back to a time when I was still a superhero. The men don't love each other superfluously, nor do they have sex for the sake of pleasure. It's intimate and connective, transcendent and absolute. In each other, they see everything they wish they could be. There is complete understanding and an overflow of repressed emotions. Acceptance and understanding are what we truly need; allowing oneself to be exposed is the ultimate act of heroism. Their love is an elegy for the death every boy experiences. I know it's just gay sex, but it forced me to recall the time when I was still Spider-Man.

Buds, read this play. The characters' suffering is intuitively knowable—we all go through it to varying degrees. Sometimes it takes someone else to remind you how beautiful you are and that the hero you used to be when you were a boy hasn't gone anywhere. All you have to do is get rid of your disguise and let people see him.

You guys are all superheroes to me.

[Bridgette Doorey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a super interesting read for me - this play discussed LGBTQ+ lives in a really frank way that would be practically impossible to pull off today. This is definitely one of those books that you can’t apply today’s standards to retroactively - the characters here are using words we don’t approve of, tropes we consider overused and attitudes that aren’t openly accepted (atleast not in my very contained experiences in very liberal and accepting settings). These characters were so real, the lingo they used as a group and the way they spoke about each other made them feel like real people dealing with the messiness issues of life. I would reccomend this book/play to anyone!

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very tired of LGBT stories where one character is already in a “straight” relationship and then cheats on their partner to be in the “gay” relationship. Cheating is gross, no matter what.

Also just some very troubling trans representation? David repeatedly misgenders Shannon throughout the entirety of this play. Honestly, all the characters except for Shannon were awful people.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always love reading this play, and the story it tells!

[Grant Kanigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profane and in your face, this is also a humanistic portrayal of real individuals that reaches a profoundly sad crescendo. Absolutely groundbreaking, this is an important North American work by an immensely talented playwright.

[Andrea Ta-wil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d have preferred to give this a 3.5 rating, but they only let you do whole numbers and as much as this play held my attention, I wasn’t going to give it a four.

In fairness, my opinion is largely skewed by the passage of time. This play is about same sex love, sexual discovery, and the AIDS epidemic, and it was written in 1995. This means the script contains language and perspectives that were “straightforward” and “edgy” in the 90s but are considered offensive today, which jolts you out of the story.

For example, there’s the way that protagonist David treats Shannon, a transgender woman. Despite their close relationship, David repeatedly misgenders Shannon by using male pronouns, outs her to another character without her consent, and even describes her as a “transvestite,” implying that he considers Shannon a man in women’s clothing and not a woman. “Transsexual” is no longer an acceptable term today, but in 1995, it would’ve been more appropriate than “transvestite,” or at least more accurate. It would be one thing if the playright intended to use David to call out transphobia in the cis-LGB community. But the play never implies that there’s anything wrong with the way that David treats Shannon’s gender identity. Instead, it comes off as unremarkable.

[Daniel Levy · Rating 2 out of 5]

J'ai lu cette pièce de théâtre au Cégep, et je peux dire qu'elle m'a marqué, mais pas nécessairement pour les bonnes raisons. Fraser aborde ici sans complexe certains thèmes LGBT, dont les difficultés encourues par une transsexuelle séropositive, ce qui est une des forces de l’œuvre.

Hélas, s'il y avait du potentiel, il est enseveli sous des personnages qui se trompent les uns les autres, des actes obscènes qui n'ont d'autres utilités que le "shock value" et des phrases qui se veulent cultes, mais sont tellement creuses et banales ("When you're born with a c*nt, you're f*cked").

Bref, à lire si on veut découvrir un théâtre gay différent de celui de Tremblay ou Bouchard.

[Erin Atacan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the captions!

[Andrea Carlisle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one of my favourite Brad Fraser plays (Love and Human Remains tops my list). David McMillan's search for lost creativity through resuming a working class career and engaging in a marital affair hint at the creation as a tool of survivance and rebellion without the burden of excessive thematic analysis or moral judgment that could've bogged the text down. Instead we see real people in ambiguous situations reacting as real people might, hinting at broader themes rather than smothering real emotion with politics and philosophy. Highly recommended.