One Traditional Simpsons Episode Impressed A Play (And Was Banned In Germany)

This put up accommodates spoilers for “Mr. Burns, A Publish-Electrical Play.”

“The Simpsons” has a wide-ranging cultural affect, however what number of episodes of the long-running collection can say they impressed a complete postmodern play? Not less than one: “Cape Feare,” the basic season 5 outing during which Sideshow Bob (Kelsey Grammer) stalks Bart and forces the Simpsons household into witness safety.

Initially well-received, the episode has solely grown in public estimation within the years because it aired, touchdown on many lists of the present’s finest episodes and incomes an simple place within the hallowed halls of popular culture historical past. It is solely becoming, then, that when playwright Anne Washburn determined to dream up a narrative a few post-apocalyptic world during which leisure junkies clung to fragments of their favourite TV exhibits, placing them on as performs that might in the end form the mythology of the brand new world, “Cape Feare” took middle stage. Washburn’s thought-provoking postmodern play, “Mr. Burns, A Publish-Electrical Play,” debuted in 2013, and its storyline fairly actually turned “Cape Feare” into the stuff of legends.

As uncommon as “Mr. Burns” is in each idea and execution, it makes use of “The Simpsons” as the place to begin for unbelievable conversations about collective reminiscence, inspiration, and the worth of storytelling in an out-of-control world. In Act 1 of the play, current apocalypse survivors attempt to self-soothe by remembering the plot of “Cape Feare,” down to each joke and apart, round a campfire. Years later, Act 2 picks up after they’ve shaped a theater troupe that trades bits of beloved TV episodes like foreign money, working collectively to recreate the scripts of their favourite exhibits based mostly on their sometimes-fuzzy recollections. Lastly, 82 years after the world “ended,” audiences are handled to a dramatic third act: a full efficiency of “Cape Feare,” one which has morphed to suit the fears, values, and language of its time.

“Mr. Burns, A Publish-Electrical Play” has appeared on levels internationally and featured castmates together with “Loki” star Wunmi Mosaku, “Our Flag Means Useless” actor Matthew Maher, and “Physician Who” actor Annabel Scholey. In 2013, Washburn instructed Gothamist that she’d long-since had the thought to “take a TV present and push its previous the apocalypse and see what occurred to it.” although she considered utilizing “Associates,” “M*A*S*H,” and “Cheers” earlier than deciding on “The Simpsons.” The playwright penned the script for Act 1 via an uncommon course of involving the theater group she co-founded. “We caught them on this financial institution vault for per week and we requested them to recollect ‘Simpsons’ episodes,” she recalled, “and the one they’ve one of the best reminiscence of was ‘Cape Feare.'” The script took form based mostly on the group’s collective recollections.

So, why has “Cape Feare” struck generations of audiences as so memorable? For one factor, the Martin Scorsese parody is without doubt one of the scariest episodes of “The Simpsons” outdoors of the franchise’s Halloween specials. An prolonged bit early on options Sideshow Bob writing a number of notes in blood, whereas characters forged heavy shadows and wield knives all through, usually for benign causes that nonetheless terrify Bart. Lightning is laced via the background of the episode’s climax, whereas Grammer performs his function with a delightfully chaotic sense of theatrics. By season 5, youthful viewers knew to count on one thing creepy particularly from the present’s “Treehouse of Horror” outings, however “Cape Feare” made a powerful impression weeks earlier than Halloween.

Plus, the episode is memorably humorous: the cops gamble on squirrels of their pants, Grandpa Simpson will get left at dwelling when the group enters witness safety and finally ends up chased by wolves, and Bob’s plan to catch Bart is interrupted by a collection of more and more painful misadventures — a discipline of cactuses, a pile of rakes, a parade of elephants — that really feel like one thing out of an “Itchy and Scratchy” episode. In a DVD commentary (through Comedian E book Sources), co-director Jon Vitti defined that the episode’s boldness and humorousness got here from each the final hurrah angle of unique crew members who have been about to go away the present, and from a number of bits that have been added in to assist the unusually quick episode attain its goal runtime.

“Cape Feare” was, at one level, even deemed too darkish for sure audiences. For six years, the episode did not air in Germany as a consequence of a gap scene that includes a person in Nazi-like apparel. “The Simpsons” itself experimented with fan reminiscence in a season 35 episode that revisited the “Cape Feare” plot, solely this time, Bart really acquired killed. The episode’s potent mixture of actual thrills and prolonged comedic bits make it a fantastic Rorschach check for the way audiences really feel about darkish humor and the specter of dying at any given second, which in flip makes it an ideal match for a play about processing the tip of the world as we all know it. Plus, that rake joke is simply timeless.