Bryan Beau Photo by Steve Graue

2022's The Mark of Kane was basically, in the parlance of comics, an origin story focusing on the creators of Batman. In 2023's The Innocence of Seduction, Pracht took on the "Comics Code," which is the equivalent of a new Star Trek film all about the "Prime Directive"–important, sure, but not in itself exciting. The House of Ideas moves from DC to Marvel, with Stan Lee (as he always is) in the foreground. If you are at all familiar with Marvel, you know Lee, its omnipresent guru. Similar to what The Mark of Kane did with DC's Bob Kane, though, Pracht here pokes a few holes in the legend. Fortunately, Lee was not anywhere near the credit thief that Kane was–though the play makes clear that he was not entirely innocent either.

Former City Lit Artistic Director Terry McCabe returns to direct Pracht's last trilogy play–he also directed the first one, while Pracht took on the middle one–and it is again a lively multimedia production. (Scenic designer G. "Max" Maxin IV includes layered projections in his set, and sound designer Petter Wahlbäck supplements it with some fine original music.) And in this play, which (in case anyone is wondering) easily stands alone without its theatrical siblings, the central story–perhaps because Lee is such a fun character–is constantly interesting.

Stan Lee is played by City Lit veteran Bryan Beau (Preacher in the recent Night of the Hunter), and he clearly has a ball doing it, especially when he gets to monologue directly to the audience in imitation of the real Lee's columns for fans. We see him in several scenes with Lee's wife Joan (a fine Kate Black-Spence), a devoted if too socially conscious woman whom he sincerely loves. She knows her husband's talent and his drive, as well as the fact that he sees himself not as a writer of comic books but as a writer of real literature.

The script's focus is his relationship with talented illustrator "King" Jack Kirby (Bryan Plocharczyk), an angry man who blames Lee because he believes he has been victimized by Lee's company. He is himself uplifted by a loving and loyal wife played by Carrie Hardin; Roz Kirby, persuaded by her husband's anger and distrust, dislikes Lee almost as much as he does, but Hardin has more than one note to play. Plocharczyk's Jack, as a natural extension of the script, is pretty much all (somewhat) justified anger all the time, while Beau shows us Lee's ebullient personality in stark contrast to the percussive anger of his partner, who always seems to be a half-second away from exploding, and petulantly insists on referring to Lee, who seems almost childlike in his love of what he is doing, as "Stanley" instead of his preferred "Stan."

Pracht's script focuses almost entirely on the conflicts in the relationship between Lee and Kirby, which was as turbulent as it was productive. Many of Marvel's most well-known characters, including Spiderman, the Avengers, and the X-Men, came about through this collaboration. The play seems to suggest that, if it were not for Kirby's intense distrust, the two might have been able to collaborate on even more iconic characters. Sadly, that's impossible to know. What the play does make absolutely clear is that Kirby was the very best comics illustrator and Lee the best comics writer of their era, and both were at their best when they worked together. (Though both men, especially Lee, would have loved to be recognized as the best, period, comics were seen as children's entertainment and not taken seriously by chroniclers of the time.)

You don't need to be a comics fan to enjoy this play (though it would certainly help). Like the first two plays in this series, The House of Ideas is actually about the conflicts, both real and imagined, between men without superpowers. You know: like all of us.

The House of Ideas runs through October 6, 2024, at City Lit Theater Company, For tickets and information, please visit www.citylit.org.