Fringe Festival Show Arkham A$$ylum Puts Batman on Trial

There's an internet meme that goes something like: Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman, and then be Batman.

CU Denver film professor and Rainbow Cult founder Andy Scahill begs to differ.

"I've never been a Batman fan," says Scahill. "I like taking on things that I can tear apart at the seams, strip it down."

Scahill, who writes under the pen name Andy Might, means "strip it down" rather literally. At this June's Denver Fringe Festival, Scahill will be presenting a burlesque original show called Arkham A$$ylum that puts the Dark Knight on trial, and by his own rogues gallery no less, to determine who, in fact, the real villain of Gotham might be.

The show, which promises plenty of clever penal system puns, heroic acrobatics and the sultriest of song and dance numbers, is making its debut from June 5-7 at the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater. A complete schedule and full-weekend passes for Denver's 2025 Fringe Fest can be found on its website; for tickets to Arkham A$$ylum alone, see the show's page on the Fringe Fest site. 

"Superhero stories are such an archetypical form," says Scahill. "We need to be asking what's at stake? What fantasies are we selling? There's a foundational text in film studies called From Caligari to Hitler by Siegfried Kracauer that looks at German cinematic output leading up to the rise of Hitler. It's a psychological analysis of the art of that period, the collective fantasies and fears. He looks at Nosferatu and M and Metropolis; they're about a world that's out of control, in which the people are calling for order. There's also this element of a return to the Norse epic and mythology as an excuse for nationalism. So Kracauer argues that we shouldn't be surprised when Hitler rises to fame; it was all right there.

"So, to bring that into today, what does our fetish for a billionaire vigilante tell us about our own cultural moment? Let's not forget that the first masked vigilante in America was the KKK," Scahill continues. "That if you're rich enough, and White enough, it's okay to step in. To patrol, whether that's Gotham or the southern border. So that's my ideological relationship to Batman. I think it's a terribly destructive fantasy."

It's true that ours isn't the same world in which Elon Musk could guest-star on The Big Bang Theory as a tech-billionaire who works a soup kitchen at Thanksgiving. This is probably no longer an America into which Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark could become the Marvel Cinematic Universe's biggest name, and depending what Marvel does with it, that might be part of the storyline to RDJ returning to the MCU not as Iron Man, but as Dr. Doom.

But Scahill says there have been other works that address this Bat-problem, naming Tim Burton's films and even the Lego Batman videogame as examples. "I'm really working against the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight here," he says. "Batman Returns is one of my favorite films, but it's not even really about Batman. It's the Penguin's story, really. And the movie really doesn't even start until Michelle Pfeiffer shows up. Batman is incidental."

Arkham A$$ylum uses the burlesque form to levy that criticism, certainly — but seeks to do it in the spirit of the bawdy art form—through parody and comedy, through movement and song. And more than a few jabs at Musk. "I'm not saying our Batman is a direct analog of Musk, but he is a tech-bro vigilante billionaire who drives a Cyberbatmobile and has TESLA in the Bat-signal and invented Bat-Coin."

But it's the villains that take center stage, as is often the case with Batman tales. Riddler is a neurodivergent kid who goes into foster care in a system owned by Bruce Wayne (Batman's alter ego); Poison Ivy is an eco-terrorist who got planted with drugs and sent to prison — she's drawn as Jessica Rabbit meets Greta Thunberg; Harley Quinn is a former psychologist at Arkham, patterned on Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, persecuted for whistleblowing; Catwoman is our jewel-thief Karen Walker (Will & Grace) with a dash of Alexis Carrington (Dynasty) who says she does the same thing Batman does, only he wore a suit and tie ("same crime, different zip code" she says); Bane is the product of a WayneCo gay conversion camp, and so on.

"And our Joker is played by Richi Ramos, who's also our director," Scahill says. "For his big number, we rewrote Lady Gaga's song 'Applause' to 'I Did it for the LOLs.'"

But along with all the musical fun, the message still matters. "That's the pleasure of doing this in the burlesque format," says Scahill. "Because it is about stripping. Both literally and metaphorically. We want to strip power, right? It's form meets function."

What's better than eating the rich, Arkham A$$ylum asks? Making them strip.

Arkham A$$ylum debuts at Denver's Fringe Festival on June 5-7 at the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater (119 Park Avenue West) at 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 5; 9:30 p.m. on Friday, June 6; and 5 p.m. on Sunday, June 7. For tickets and more information, see its page on the Fringe Fest website.