Batman Live

This past Thursday our family went down to the HP Pavilion in San Jose to see a stage version of the Batman story, called "Batman Live".  I purchased tickets back in March for this family oriented super hero stage show after seeing an ad for it in the newspaper.  While I would have probably been excited at any time to get tickets to see this type of show, during that time seeing a Batman stage show especially piqued my interest for several reasons:  anticipation was high for the last Nolan Batman movie to be released later that year, I was playing through the fantastic new PS3 game Arkham City, the kids were playing through the more kids-oriented PS3 game Lego Batman, and we were in the middle of watching Justice League episodes as a family.

Generally I'm not one for stage shows, as the cost-to-enjoyment factor for the whole family is not nearly high enough when compared to movies for it to usually be worth it for me.  And while even this one was done for a comparatively low budget when compared to a typical Broadway show, I thought it was a fun way to see the caped crusader in a new way.  We even bought each person in our family binoculars to compensate for the middle-of-the-range tickets we bought, although it turned out that the HP Pavilion seats are decently close to the stage for any seat but the highest balcony ones.  But now we have a good range of binoculars we can use on other family trips.

If you're curious about what the show was like, you can probably get a better idea of what it's like by viewing the trailer for it from it's official website, http://www.batmanlive.com, than from any way I could describe it.  A unique aspect of this from other stage shows was the huge batman logo-shaped screen in the back of the stage that helped create the various settings of the show and aided the progression of the story by showing animated renderings of the streets of Gotham city, the circus, and Wayne Manor.  And besides seeing the most popular of the batman heroes and villians depicted in the show, there was also a nice blend of acrobatics, stage effects, and even a mini-magic show during one part to help round out the general appeal of the show.  And Haylee, Cameron, and Landon seemed to especially enjoy pointing out the various kids (and adults!) that were dressed as Batman characters we saw as we were walking into the seating area from the parking lot.