Hero

Marriott Theatre, Lincolnshire, Ill.

(847) 634-0200

***

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Composer and lyricist Michael Mahler possesses a superpower that is “not to be squandered,” said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. Hero may be the young Chicagoan’s first legitimate full-length score, but “plenty of well-established composers would struggle mightily to come up with such a sticky, hummable, fresh, and zesty suite of songs.” They’re easily the best thing about this musical, which follows a 28-year-old clerk in a comic book store who shelved his artistic dreams years earlier after a family tragedy. The story, by Aaron Thielen, is likable enough, even if it sometimes deals in “obvious tropes of musical comedy.” But “every time the band cranks up another number, you find yourself excited to hear what sounds will emerge.”

The songs are “wonderfully conversational, whether in the key of anguish or mischief,” said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. When the protagonist, Hero Batowski, is being coaxed out of a decade-long rut by an old girlfriend, the duet “That’s My Kryptonite” serves as both a love song and an ode to artistic inspiration. “Powerless,” a “gut-wrenching” confessional, connects the fall of Hero’s comic book idols with the rocky relationship he’s had with his father. And the music is by no means the only strength of this show, which is “funny, real, and full of heart.”

It could have been even more, said Dan Jakes in Time Out Chicago. After laying the groundwork for a young man’s existential crisis, Thielen and Mahler maintain a “Big Bang Theory–style light touch” instead of following through. Still, while Hero “falls short on stakes,” the cast, led by stars Erich Bergen and Heidi Kettenring, “shines with giddy nerdery.” Even Alex Goodrich, saddled with the “schlocky comic relief role” of Hero’s self-appointed wingman, tackles the job with “disarming aw-shucks warmth.” Whatever its faults, this musical abounds in “the sort of earnestness you’d expect” from a gang of adults who still read the comics.