Death Adder of a Salesman!

So theatre, if we're being honest, isn't...shall we say, everyone's go-to form of entertainment. Usually it seems to rank somewhere below staying home and watching reality shows about people who root through other people's storage units, but above say, going to bed early.

Storage Wars is a show that asks the
 question, 'Has it come to this, America?'

Did I just make you picture
milking Alfred? Sorry about that...

On the upside though, this usually insulates it from the popular trend of adapting things that probably shouldn't be made into other things. Like movies and tv for example. I mean, no one asked for a movie version of Venom, or a tv show about Batman's Butler, but filmmakers and tv producers are ravenous for source material and will milk whatever they have to milk to build their franchises and IP's. It's gross and fortunately something theatre, as an art form, hasn't had to deal with.

"I...I don't know what this is..."

-Raves the New York 

Times Theatre Review

I'm not fandom shaming here, I love theatre and in fact that's what my degree is in...and now I work in a bookstore. Huh, now that I think about it, I guess I haven't ever been terribly interested in making a livable wage. But, where was I? Right, theatre. It's not exactly the branch of the entertainment industry where one would find adaptations of things like comic books and video games. So I'm more than a little perplexed by the news that Golden Axe is being adapted for the stage. Yes, coming soon: Golden Axe: The Game: The Stage Play. It's enough to make you go 'Wait, really?'

Above: the well-oiled art of
Frank Fr-oh, Boris Vallejo. Huh.

That is if you know what Golden Axe is. Otherwise, you're probably wondering what nonsense am I going on about now. And that's a fair assessment, but for those unfamiliar, which I'm going to guess is anyone who didn't get the title of this post. If you did, you can skip this part. Golden Axe is a side-scrolling beat'em up action game from the late 80's. Like a lot of games from this period, it was under some sort of obligation to shamelessly rip off a popular movie, in this case Conan The Barbarian. After you insert coin, you're invited to select either a barbarian called Ax Battler, an amazon named Tyris Flare or a dwarf whose name is, preposterously, Gillius Thunderhead. Then you and a friend murder your way through six levels of Frank Franzetta art before taking on Death Adder, the evil bad guy who murdered your family or whatever.

It's a good game, but kind of a baffling choice to adapt as a play. A fact that is absolutely not going to stop Spiral Chariots, a theatre company in Tokyo. Check out the poster:

Just to be clear, there is an actor in Japan who
will be able to add 'originated the role of Gillius
Thunderhead' on their resume.

You know, if Willy Loman could
summon dragons to incinerate his foes.

Sure, there's not much in the way of plot, and the characters are just speechless cyphers, and they have no story beyond wanting to go kill Death Adder. And yes, playing through the game takes about thirty minutes, so the playwright's got their work cut out for them padding that out into ninety minutes of traffic of the stage, but who knows? Maybe this will be the next Death of A Salesman. Or maybe this will be a niche-y piece of otaku entertainment that disappears as quickly and as bizarrely as it came. Either way, I suspect you and I will never know. It's only running for four days, which is probably for the best.

This isn't me saying Japan is weird or anything, it's just that I get the impression that people are a little more free to fly their fandom flag in a country where Hello Kitty-themed bullet trains are things that exist.

Finally, the New York subway system is now the
world's second weirdest form of public transport.