| Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play | |
|---|---|
 The poster for the original off-Broadway production atPlaywrights Horizons | |
| Written by | Anne Washburn |
| Date premiered | May 2012 |
| Place premiered | Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington, D.C. |
| Genre | Black comedy |
Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play (stylizedMr. Burns, a post-electric play) is an Americanblack comedy play written byAnne Washburn with music byMichael Friedman. The play depicts the evolution of the story from theSimpsons episode "Cape Feare" in the decades after anapocalyptic event.
It premiered in May 2012 at theWoolly Mammoth Theatre Company inWashington, D.C., and ran from August through October 2013 atPlaywrights Horizons inNew York City, commissioned and developed with the New York theater companyThe Civilians. It received polarized reviews and was nominated for a 2014Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play.
It was produced at theAlmeida Theatre inLondon in 2014 by directorRobert Icke, and inAdelaide andSydney, Australia in 2017 by director Imara Savage. The UK regional premiere was produced atDerby Theatre in 2023 by director Omar Khan.
Shortly after an unspecifiedapocalypse, six survivors gather at a campfire. To distract themselves from mourning, they attempt to recount the episode "Cape Feare" of the TV showThe Simpsons, as well as several other pieces of media.
Seven years later, the group has formed atravelling theatre company that specializes in performingSimpsons episodes. Live theatre is a major entertainment form in the new society, with troupes fiercely competing to replicate pre-apocalyptic stories. Despite this goal, the group's rendition ofCape Feare differs from the real episode in many small ways. During a rehearsal, the group is attacked by armed robbers, with their fates unknown.
75 years after that,Cape Feare is performed as amusical in a theater dedicated toThe Simpsons. The characters, plot and morals have changed into more serious andepic forms. For example,Mr. Burns has been combined with Sideshow Bob (the actualCape Feare villain) and is now a supernatural avatar of death and destruction.
In the musical's story, Burns destroys Springfield by sabotagingthe nuclear power plant. The Simpsons flee from the catastrophe onto a houseboat. Burns and hisdemonic henchmenItchy & Scratchy sneak onto the boat and untie the mooring ropes, then begin killing the Simpsons one by one. Bart, the last survivor, almost surrenders out of despair. However, he receives encouragement from the ghosts of his family and duels Burns in a swordfight. Burns almost wins, but when the boat enters violentrapids, he is flung onto Bart's sword and dies. As Bart sings a finale song about hope for the future, the stage is lit up by bicycle-powered electric lights—the first appearance of electricity in the play.[1]
Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play was written byAnne Washburn with a score composed byMichael Friedman.[2][3] For a long time, Washburn had been exploring what it would be like "to take a TV show and push it past the apocalypse and see what happened to it" and while she originally consideredFriends,Cheers, andM*A*S*H, she ultimately settled onThe Simpsons.[4]
Working withThe Civilians theater company, who had commissioned the play, Washburn held a workshop for a week in 2008 with actorsMatthew Maher,Maria Dizzia, and Jennifer R. Morris to see how much of any episode ofThe Simpsons they could remember.[3][4] Maher knewThe Simpsons well and the group decided on the 1993 episode "Cape Feare", based on the 1991 filmCape Fear, itself a remake of aneponymous 1962 film which is based on the 1957 novelThe Executioners.[3][5] He helped Dizzia and Morris remember the episode, then the two of them went on to perform it for an audience without his help; Washburn subsequently utilized recordings of this process in writing her play's first act.[3]
The play had its world premiere in May 2012 atWashington, D.C.'sWoolly Mammoth Theatre Company. It was commissioned byThe Civilians and developed in partnership with them,Seattle Repertory Theatre, andPlaywrights Horizons.[6][3][7] It was directed bySteve Cosson who got confirmation from several lawyers that the play fell under the umbrella offair use.[3]
Cosson also directed theNew York City production atPlaywrights Horizons that premiered on September 15, 2013.[2] Maher and Morris, who had not appeared in the Woolly Mammoth production, returned for the New York staging.[2][3] At Playwrights, the show ran until October 20, 2013.[8]Samuel French, Inc. published the show's script and licenses productions of the show.[6]
| Character(s) | Original off-Broadway cast[2] | Original D.C. cast[9] |
|---|---|---|
| Quincy, Businesswoman,Bart 2 | Quincy Tyler Bernstine | Erika Rose[10] |
| Susannah,Lisa 1, Second F.B.I. Agent,Itchy | Susannah Flood | Jenna Sokolowski |
| Gibson, Loving Husband,Sideshow Bob,Homer 2 | Gibson Frazier | Chris Genebach |
| Matt, Homer 1,Scratchy | Matthew Maher | Steve Rosen |
| Nedra,Edna Krabappel | Nedra McClyde | |
| Jenny,Marge | Jennifer R. Morris | Kimberly Gilbert |
| Colleen, First F.B.I. Agent, Lisa 2 | Colleen Werthmann | Amy McWilliams |
| Sam, Bart 1,Mr. Burns | Sam Breslin Wright | James Sugg |
Washburn continued to revise the play for its European premiere at theAlmeida Theatre inLondon in Spring 2014, and a new draft was published byOberon Books. It was directed byRobert Icke, who commissionedOrlando Gough to compose a new a cappella score for the third act. The London production was visually and emotionally darker than the New York one, especially in its third act which resembledGreek tragedy as much asThe Simpsons.[11]
It provoked an extremely divided reaction from British critics; ratings ranged from one to five stars.[12]
| Character(s) | Original London cast[13] |
|---|---|
| Maria, Lisa | Annabel Scholey |
| Gibson, Itchy | Adrian der Gregorian |
| Matt, Homer | Demetri Goritsas |
| Quincy, Marge | Wunmi Mosaku |
| Colleen, Bart | Jenna Russell |
| Sam, Mr Burns | Michael Shaeffer |
| Nedra | Adey Grummet |
| Jenny, Scratchy | Justine Mitchell |
A co-production betweenSydney'sBelvoir St Theatre and theState Theatre Company South Australia[14] saw the play performed atSpace Theatre in theAdelaide Festival Centre,Adelaide, in April–May 2017[15] and at the Belvoir in May–June 2017.[16]
Mitchell Butel took the roles of Mr Burns and Gibson, whilePaula Arundell,Esther Hannaford, Jude Henshall, Brent Hill, Ezra Juanta, and Jacqy Phillips making up the rest of the cast. The production was directed by Imara Savage. The play was mostly met with good reviews[17][18] and Butel won aHelpmann Award for his performance.[19]
The New York Times rankedMr. Burns: a post-electric play at #4 on its list "The Great Work Continues: The 25 Best American Plays SinceAngels in America." Critic Laura Collins-Hughes wrote, "Not everyone loves this play; not everyone’s meant to. But for the rest of us, it’s the kind of bold, inventive show that sends you staggering out onto the street afterward, stunned and exhilarated, not sure quite what you’ve just experienced because you’ve never seen its like before."[20]
InTime,Richard Zoglin characterized the reaction to the show as receiving "some rave reviews, a few equally passionate dissents and sellout crowds."[21]Ben Brantley ofThe New York Times comparedMr. Burns toGiovanni Boccaccio's 14th-century bookThe Decameron in which a group of Italian youths have fled theBlack Death to a villa where they begin to exchange stories.[2] "At the end of Steve Cosson's vertiginous production, which opened on Sunday night at Playwrights Horizons, you’re likely to feel both exhausted and exhilarated from all the layers of time and thought you've traveled through", wrote Brantley.[2] Reviewing forVulture, Scott Brown found "Cape Feare" to be "a perfectpalimpsest" and commended the ending musical number as "equal partsBrecht and Bart, Homer andthe other Homer".[22]
In his otherwise positive review, Brown noted that the play's "flabby middle act could use some tightening, to better dramatize Washburn’s talky deepthink."[22]Marilyn Stasio wrote forVariety that the "piece loses sight of its humanity with an overproduced pop-rap-operetta in the underplotted second act".[23]The Huffington Post's David Finkle felt that the play "could be contained in a 15-minute skit--if not quite a 140-character tweet" and that Washburn "stretches and stretches it through [its] three parts".[24]
The play is mentioned in the 2015The Simpsons episode "Let's Go Fly a Coot" as part of a list of recent post-apocalyptic films (despite the fact that it is not a film). In writerMike Reiss's memoir about writing for the show,Springfield Confidential, he describes his disappointment with the play, saying that both it and the playwright failed because the play was whatThe Simpsons itself never was, "grim, pretentious and dull."[25]
| Year | Award | Subject | Result | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Drama League Award | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | Nominated | [8] |
Julie Grossman examinedMr. Burns as an instance of multilayered adaptation. She wrote that the show "challenges audiences to embrace the imaginative (if strange and alienating) scions, or adaptations, of cultural matter."[26] In reference to characters in the play's second act bargaining for rights to and lines from otherSimpsons episodes, she noted "That permissions and copyright have survived the apocalypse brings out the absurdity of owning the rights to artistic production and dialogue and the persistence of capitalism."[27] Grossman differentiatedMr. Burns fromEmily St. John Mandel's 2014 novelStation Eleven, which also examines storytelling in a postapocalyptic setting, in the types of catalysts for their respective apocalypse: a naturally occurring flu outbreak inStation Eleven versus an unnatural and greed-driven nuclear collapse inMr. Burns.[28] "Although the play's postmodern mash-up of television, film, and theater is highly entertaining, its powerful ethics resides in seeing capitalism and consumerism (symbolized by the greedySimpsons character Mr. Burns) as the causes of civilization's decay."[29]
