DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended
"... Forget 3-D superhero movies. In The History of Invulnerability at Theater J, Director Shirley Serotsky and her crack team of actors and designers bring Superman comic books to life before your eyes. Robbie Hayes’ spectacular set consists of two huge flats, set at a V-shaped angle and made up of multi-sized panels. The effect is of a giant comic book, and throughout the show, the panels are frequently filled with projected images of comic book art. The projections (also designed by Mr. Hayes) provide a dynamic visual backdrop to the story of Superman’s creator."
Washington City Paper - Recommended
"... Jerry Siegel was still a teenager when he and his friend Joe Shuster dreamed up a human-looking, English-speaking alien visitor of unlikely strength and impossible selflessness. It took them six years to get their creation into print, and more than four decades to receive due credit for inventing one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world."
Washington Times - Somewhat Recommended
"... A weakness for underscoring historical and philosophical ironies trips up playwright David Bar Katz as he teases out “The History of Invulnerability,” an ambitious and colorful but heavy-handed and undersynthesized play about the creation of Superman. Now on view in a handsome Theater J production, which does an admirable job of softening the script’s schematic tendencies, it’s a work that sometimes feels less like a piece of theater than an illustrated lecture — a lecture not only about the life of Jerry Siegel, the Cleveland resident who helped conceived of the Man of Steel in the 1930s, but also about humanity’s ability to use art and imagination to compensate for loss, alienation and powerlessness."
Washingtonian - Recommended
"... Katz’s script volleys from following Siegel’s frustrating personal and professional ups and downs to revealing the plight of a group of desperate prisoners (Chiet, Conrad Feininger, and David Raphaely) at Birkenau concentration camp. The effect is sometimes compelling—it’s a jarring structural choice that highlights the contrast between Superman’s invincibility and Siegel and the inmates’ fragile humanity. But at other times it feels heavy-handed, excessive, and choppy, hammering at themes that other aspects of the production achieve far more gracefully and with less blatant effort."
BrightestYoungThings - Recommended
"... Anyone remotely interested in comic book history should check out The History of Invulnerability,the play exposes fascinating real-world gravity to a genre of entertainment literature which can easily be written off as out of touch with reality. Theater J does an excellent job of framing the production through well-written dramaturgy in the program leaflet which further fleshes out the connections between Jewish culture and comic book lore, and the play is complimented by an exhibition of comics by contemporary Jewish women artists."
Washington Jewish Week - Recommended
"... Playwright Bar Katz exploits the life story of Jerry Siegel, the idea guy behind the man in the blue tights and cape. But more pointedly, Bar Katz goes where Siegel couldn't - his publisher thought it too incendiary for Superman to fend off Hitler - to the Nazi concentration camps where his script juxtaposes emaciated Jews with the tall, healthy broad-shouldered man of steel. By placing Superman in a concentration camp, we see the other side of Jewish desire and the undeniable spirit of survival in the face of unrelenting destruction. In the process, Theater J takes an unusual step into the abyss. While the long provocative Jewish theater company has dealt with the Holocaust on stage in the past in unexpected ways, this production pushes the troupe further than ever, into an unvarnished scene that dares to lift the curtain on one of the last taboos of Holocaust dramatization."
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"... Theater J’s production of The History of Invulnerability, written by David Bar Katz and directed by Shirley Serotsky, is a poignant rollercoaster of stunning contrasts, running the gamut from colorful pulp fantasy to the dark heart of the Holocaust."
DCTheatreScene - Recommended
It is playwright David Bar Katz’s singular insight that Superman, like the other extraordinary men and women of the comics – Batman, Spiderman and the like – were primarily the creation of Jewish writers and artists. (Batman’s creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Captain America’s creators Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, and Spiderman’s creator Stan Lee were all Jewish men who changed their names to something more Anglicized.)
Moreover, there is a certain commonality to their stories (father killed in a crime; a secret identity) which also reflected the Jewish experience in the then-modern world of 1938 when Superman was born.
