It’s not easy being a superhero charged with protecting Brooklyn. Making sure all that fresh produce makes it from farm to table. Breaking up fights at the Park Slope Food Co-op. Preventing French tourists from falling into the Gowanus Canal. These and other daily challenges are the responsibility of six superpower-endowed men and women fighting the good fight in “Brooklynite,” a slight but goofily endearing new musical that opened on Wednesday at the Vineyard Theater.
With a perky pop score by Peter Lerman and a slyly funny book by Mr. Lerman and the veteran Michael Mayer (“American Idiot,” “Spring Awakening”), who also directs, the show makes genial sport of both superheroic tropes and the rise of Brooklyn, which has itself become a sort of champ among New York boroughs. (“In a world beyond savin’/Brooklyn is a haven,” runs one of Mr. Lerman’s cheerleading lyrics.)
The characters were created by Michael Chabon, whose novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” was set during the halcyon days of the comic-book business in the 1940s, and Ayelet Waldman, also a novelist (and married to Mr. Chabon). Another inspiration was the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company — yes, an actual establishment! — for which the musical’s plot supplies an elaborate fictional back story.
The shop began life, we learn, as a humble neighborhood hardware store where the nerd-tastic Trey Swieskowski (Matt Doyle) toils, having inherited the store from his parents. A science whiz, Trey is obsessed with the idea of reconstituting Brooklynite, the substance that turned six average borough-dwellers into superheroes when an asteroid crashed in their midst. Trey’s wish is to join this Legion of Victory, the celebrated team that has turned Brooklyn into a crime-free utopia, albeit one with murderous rents.
As it happens, the leader of the pack, the comely Astrolass (Nicolette Robinson), has tired of the life and its ceaseless demands. As she sings in a reflective solo revealing her angst, “I know how to save a life, I just don’t know how to live one.”
Her decision to quit the tights-and-cape existence and take up a normal job naturally causes a fight for leadership among the remaining superheroes: El Fuego (Andrew Call), a short-order cook from Bay Ridge who now has the ability to shoot fire; Blue Nixie (Grace McLean), a former marine biologist from Brighton Beach, who can control the tides; Kid Comet (Gerard Canonico), a messenger from Dumbo transformed into the fastest man living (“I finish my commute just as I begin it,” he sings); Captain Clear, a file clerk who’s now completely invisible (we just hear his voice); and Avenging Angelo (Nick Cordero), an unemployed gamer from Bensonhurst whose rather modest (if hilarious) gift is being able to locate empty parking spots.
Avenging Angelo, played with outsize swagger by Mr. Cordero (a Tony nominee for “Bullets Over Broadway”), has always yearned for more respect. When he’s passed over for the job of leader, resentment festers and a supervillain — or a would-be supervillain — is born.
Will Trey succeed in achieving his dream? Will Astrolass find happiness as a humble office worker for the Save the World Foundation? Will sparks fly when these two eventually meet? Will Avenging Angelo foil Trey’s plans and steal the Brooklynite, decimate the borough with the powers he gains and make Murray Hill the center of his domain and New York’s new utopia? (Good luck.)
All these questions, and several equally momentous ones, will, of course, be answered by the time this thoroughly family-friendly musical concludes. At a little more than two hours with intermission, “Brooklynite” stretches its material a little thinly, or at least it did for this lifelong nonreader of comic books and nonwatcher of superhero blockbusters. (O.K., I saw the Michael Keaton “Batman.”)
But plentiful infusions of knowing jokes make a nice contrast with the silly Saturday-morning-cartoon gyrations of the plot. True, many of the gags will be lost on people for whom Brooklyn might as well be the planet Krypton. When Kid Comet complains to Astrolass that her retirement is wreaking havoc with the legion, and he can’t keep up, he says: “I used to be the 4 train. Now I’m the G. We need you back.”
Mr. Lerman’s songs are smoothly constructed and infectious pop-rock, played with spirit by a six-piece band led by the music director, Kimberly Grigsby. There’s an appealing first-meeting duet for Trey and Astrolass, “Little White Lie,” and a thundering climax to the first act, when things look dire for poor Trey just as he’s on the verge of finalizing his formula. The ever-in-demand choreographer Steven Hoggett — this season alone, his work has been seen in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” “The Last Ship” and “Let the Right One In” — provides the dancing, in a friskier mode than his usual stylized vernacular movement.
The performers embrace their characters with gusto. Mr. Cordero bites into his role as the big bad (and dumb) guy. Mr. Canonico, as that speedy Kid Comet, does indeed zip around the stage with brio. Mr. Call and Ms. McLean bicker and flirt energetically in a somewhat unnecessary secondary romantic subplot. In the leading roles, Ms. Robinson sparkles as Astrolass, managing to imbue her moral quandary with something resembling gravitas. And Mr. Doyle sings ardently and acts the lovable geek with winning conviction. Everyone deserves extra points for wearing silly, shiny and very synthetic-looking superhero gear (by the designer Andrea Lauer) with dignity.
With the band onstage, partly hidden behind Donyale Werle’s cityscape sets, “Brooklynite” feels a bit cramped at the Vineyard. And, of course, there’s no avoiding that movies and television — and, for that matter, comic books — have an easier time making the fantastic feats of superheroes exciting. But the scrappy, no-frills nature of “Brooklynite” feels right for the material, which has the grace not to take itself too seriously. And anyway, lavish and expensive effects didn’t do much for a certain other superhero-based musical, did they?
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