Let’s review the gentrification of Brooklyn: ten years ago, the Gowanus Asteroid landed in Prospect Park, imbuing a group of passersby with awesome superpowers. This band of heroes, calling themselves the League of Victory, now spend their days putting out subway fires, stopping muggers, and generally keeping Brooklyn safe for vegan bakeries and bicycle collectives.
That, anyway, is the version put forward by the new musical “Brooklynite,” which recently opened of Broadway. The show is the rare musical based on a store. (“Walmartopia,” a Fringe Festival hit in 2006, is another.) Its inspiration is the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, which opened in Park Slope eleven years ago and specializes in capes, masks, ray guns, invisibility coating, and other crime-fighting accoutrements. Behind a secret moving wall—designed to elicit “whoa”s—is a spacious after-school…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, Mar-16-15