It’s hard to figure out exactly where to look while watching “The Intergalactic Nemesis Book One: Target Earth.” Geared for kids ages 7 and older, this new “live-action graphic novel” is literally all over the place.
The show, written and directed by Jason Neulander, marries comic books with old-fashioned radio drama. It’s set in 1933, when intrepid female reporter Molly Sloan and her Jimmy Olson-type assistant, Timmy, team up with a mysterious librarian to rescue the planet from the Zygonian sludge monsters led by the evil Mysterion the Magnificent.
As three performers deliver their lines in hammily entertaining fashion in front of old-school, stand-up microphones, more than 1,200 of Tim Doyle’s hand-drawn images are projected on a giant screen — it’s like a comic book that saves you the trouble of turning the pages.
Meanwhile, a Foley artist uses a variety of props to create sound effects ranging from crashing thunder to thudding footsteps. A pianist provides spine-tingling musical accompaniment, while someone else sits in front of an Apple computer, presumably orchestrating the whole thing.
Probably only kids and comic-book fanatics are capable of following the endlessly convoluted plot, which throws in everything from robots to a spunky parrot, even a Mae West hologram. The dialogue runs to grade-A cheddar: When a nervous Timmy says, “There’s something odd going on here, Molly,” she replies, “Odd like the number 13, kid.”
It’s all great fun, for a while. But it goes on far too long, taxing the attention spans of young and old alike. It would function better as a concise one-act, though that would mean losing the cliffhanger ending just before intermission.
And while this happily retro multimedia extravaganza is playing the family-friendly New Victory Theater, it would make a nifty midnight show for sci-fi geeks. There are even plans for a sequel — same time, same theater, next year.