By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 7, 2011; 8:39 PM
NEW YORK - If you're going to spend $65 million and not end up with the best musical of all time, I suppose there's a perverse distinction in being one of the worst.
Mind you, I haven't seen every stinker ever produced, so I can't categorically confirm that "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" belongs in the dankest subbasement of the American musical theater. But its application certainly seems to be in order.
What's apparent after 170 spirit-snuffing minutes in the Foxwoods Theatre - interrupted by the occasional burst of aerial distraction - is that director Julie Taymor, of "The Lion King" fame, left a few essential items off her lavish shopping list:
1. Coherent plot
2. Tolerable music
3. Workable sets
To be sure, Taymor has found a way to send her superhero soaring above the audience. And yet, the creature that most often spreads its wings in the Foxwoods is a turkey.
As you no doubt are aware, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" has made one of the most snakebitten (and heavily publicized) forays onto Broadway in memory. Money problems were followed by mechanical mishaps that sent several seriously injured actors to the hospital. Preview performances began Nov. 28; a formal opening night had been scheduled for Dec. 21. The musical's producers pushed back the date to Jan. 11, and later to Feb. 7, and then to March 15.
Reasonable observers can differ on how long a news organization should wait to inform readers about the merits of any production once it has been running for months (and charging as much as $275 for an orchestra seat). Based on the preview period's ever-expanding length and the intense public interest generated by the nationwide news coverage, this newspaper decided, like many other outlets, not to wait out the latest delay and observe Feb. 7 as the opening.
At the outset of the preview I attended, a man appeared onstage to read a short speech about the production's technical issues and to assure us that "the [New York State] Department of Labor has approved all of our aerial sequences." It should be noted that no significant glitches occurred over the ensuing two hours and 50 minutes.
Clearly, though, the Department of Lucidity has not been in the building in quite a while. Story-wise, "Spider-Man" is a shrill, insipid mess, a musical aimed squarely at a Cub Scout demographic. Looking at the sad results, you're compelled to wonder: Where did all those tens of millions go?
The 8-year-old boys in the audience might be able to key on the Cirque du Soleil-style stunts on wires and video-game graphic elements, and probably not worry too much that "Spider-Man" is a tangle of disjointed concepts, scenes and musical sequences that suggests its more appropriate home would be off a highway in Orlando. Come to think of it, the optimal audience might be non-English-speaking.
The tale doesn't so much unfold as ooze out, on the operating theory that if you throw everything against a theater wall, something might stick. It essentially begins with the superhero metamorphosis of nerdy Peter Parker, played by the likable Matthew James Thomas at the performance I attended; he alternates in the role with Reeve Carney. From there, things get convoluted, fast.
Solemn comic-book myths merge with solemn Greek myths and apocalyptic environmental visions for the origin stories of heroes and villains, who multiply in numbers (and ever more outrageous get-ups) as the production wears on. Shapeless expository scenes in laboratories and newsrooms elongate the proceedings. A perfunctory romance lurches along between Peter and the love of his life, budding actress Mary Jane Watson (Jennifer Damiano).
A so-called "Geek Chorus" of caffeinated Marvel comic fanatics (Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Mat Devine and Alice Lee) hangs out on the edge of the stage, offering utterly superfluous commentary. Maybe they'd earn their place up there if they could explain the ludicrous role of Arachne (T.V. Carpio), a woman transformed by the goddess Athena into a spider who has spent several millennia awaiting the arrival of another spider-human hybrid. She's a New Agey sort of bad gal who has the worst song in the show, something to do with a raid on 50 shoe stores by Arachne's gang of eight-legged Furies. The high-heeled spoils are affixed to, yes, the spider-ladies' extremities.
Or wait, maybe the bottom of the barrel is a weird on-the-runway sequence, in which a cadre of second-tier villains with names like Swiss Miss and Carnage do a bit of high-fashion sashaying. In the running, too, is a bizarre military number, as well as the first-act closer, a rip-off of a Rodgers and Hart song. The latter is sung by - get out your score cards - the other main-event evildoer, the Green Goblin, a former scientist played by the talented classical actor Patrick Page.
Page and the other principal actors, burdened by Taymor and Glen Berger's lumbering book, never stand a chance.
The score, by Bono and the U2 guitarist the Edge, is an ineffectual bystander. It's loud and pulsing and devoid of personality. I've rarely experienced a production in which the music is so completely drowned out by the sets. Designer George Tsypin uses elaborate hydraulics to conjure the Chrysler Building and other Manhattan skyscrapers from all sorts of angles and perspectives.
The images are intended to showcase the musical's star. That would not be a person, but a rope trick. Spider-gliding is what this show is selling, and so you wait for the wires to be hooked to the phalanx of stunt men who take turns being guided from midair onto ledges on the theater's upper levels.
If watching actors in latex land in the mezzanine is your idea of an evening well spent, "Spider-Man" won't seem a gargantuan waste. Musical lovers, however, might wish the whole unsalvageable thing would just take a flying leap.
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge, book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger. Directed by Taymor. Dance and aerial choreography, Daniel Ezralow; lighting, Donald Holder; costumes, Eiko Ishioka; sound, Jonathan Deans; projections, Kyle Cooper; aerial design, Scott Rogers; music direction, Kimberly Grigsby. With Isabel Keating, Michael Mulheren. About 2 hours 50 minutes. At Foxwoods Theatre, 213 W. 42nd St., New York. Visit www.ticketmaster.com or call 877-250-2929.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/07/AR2011020704088_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2011020704113
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Gorgeous, Dumb `Spider-Man' Remains Inert After 65 Previews: Jeremy Gerard
By Jeremy Gerard - Feb 8, 2011 8:59 AM ET
There were two showstoppers during the 65th preview of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” on Saturday night, and they weren’t songs.
This was meant to be the weekend critics came, though the producers of this elaborately afflicted musical once again postponed opening night until March 15.
No dice. Critics from the New York Times, local tabloids, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others, dropped in anyway. And so did I, for the second time, to re- review a show I had found close to unsalvageable on Dec. 26.
Preview number 65 was no improvement over number 30. In fact, it was worse.
At around midpoint in Act I, Reeve Carney couldn’t take flight as he was supposed to. While the crew futzed with the wires, Spidey and his nemesis the Green Goblin (Patrick Page) sauntered over to a downstage piano and ad libbed what turned out to be the funniest lines of the night.
“Better be careful with that Champagne,” warned the Goblin as Spider-Man lifted a glass.
“Pretty soon you’ll be flying over the audience’s heads.” He paused. “I hear they’ve dropped a few of ‘em.” That drew a great laugh.
Dangling Conversation
Minutes later, during their big, 30-second battle scene, Spider-Man had to be helped onto one of his high perches and the Goblin was left dangling for several minutes over the pricey seats.
Director Julie Taymor had said she would be crafting a new second act that required time. Back in December, the show ended ambiguously, with a morose super-hero. That’s been replaced by a crowd-pleasing buss that Mary Jane plants on him as he bungees, upside-down, from the rafters.
The best thing about “Spider-Man” remains George Tsypin’s sets, a giddy-making color-saturated mash-up of bold comic-strip tableaux and ingenious, perspective-altering views of the Chrysler building, a teeny subway train, a threatening city schoolyard.
They frame Taymor and costume designer Eiko Ishioka’s outlandishly bedecked villains and life-size puppets. Donald Holder has unleashed every exclamatory trick of the lighting designer’s trade to make the show a heart-quickening visual trip, pumped up by Daniel Ezralow’s acrobatic choreography.
Spider-Woman?
Bono and The Edge, mostly out touring with U2 when not at Davos, have dropped in from time to time without changing the songs, which remain loud, dull and unmemorable.
Neither Taymor nor her co-writer, Glen Berger, have found a way to improve the book, a protofeminist stew that foolishly decants the myth of the weaver Arachne into a story that’s incoherent to begin with.
After all this expenditure of talent and money, “Spider- Man” is probably unfixable because too much has gone into making humans fly, which is not what they are good at. It imitates poorly what the “Spider-Man” movies do brilliantly with computer graphics -- and without putting live actors in jeopardy.
They are fine actors. In addition to Carney and Page, I liked Jennifer Damiano, who has little to do as girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, but does it winningly, and Michael Mulheren as crass Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson.
Maybe the show eventually will run for several performances in a row without having to stop to untangle someone. Some triumph.
At the Foxwoods Theatre, 213 W. 42nd St. Information: +1- 877-250-2929; http://spidermanonbroadway.marvel.com. Rating: **
What the Stars Mean:
**** Excellent
*** Very Good
** Average
* Not So Good
(No stars) Avoid
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-07/gorgeous-dumb-spider-man-remains-inert-after-65-previews-jeremy-gerard.html
There were two showstoppers during the 65th preview of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” on Saturday night, and they weren’t songs.
This was meant to be the weekend critics came, though the producers of this elaborately afflicted musical once again postponed opening night until March 15.
No dice. Critics from the New York Times, local tabloids, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others, dropped in anyway. And so did I, for the second time, to re- review a show I had found close to unsalvageable on Dec. 26.
Preview number 65 was no improvement over number 30. In fact, it was worse.
At around midpoint in Act I, Reeve Carney couldn’t take flight as he was supposed to. While the crew futzed with the wires, Spidey and his nemesis the Green Goblin (Patrick Page) sauntered over to a downstage piano and ad libbed what turned out to be the funniest lines of the night.
“Better be careful with that Champagne,” warned the Goblin as Spider-Man lifted a glass.
“Pretty soon you’ll be flying over the audience’s heads.” He paused. “I hear they’ve dropped a few of ‘em.” That drew a great laugh.
Dangling Conversation
Minutes later, during their big, 30-second battle scene, Spider-Man had to be helped onto one of his high perches and the Goblin was left dangling for several minutes over the pricey seats.
Director Julie Taymor had said she would be crafting a new second act that required time. Back in December, the show ended ambiguously, with a morose super-hero. That’s been replaced by a crowd-pleasing buss that Mary Jane plants on him as he bungees, upside-down, from the rafters.
The best thing about “Spider-Man” remains George Tsypin’s sets, a giddy-making color-saturated mash-up of bold comic-strip tableaux and ingenious, perspective-altering views of the Chrysler building, a teeny subway train, a threatening city schoolyard.
They frame Taymor and costume designer Eiko Ishioka’s outlandishly bedecked villains and life-size puppets. Donald Holder has unleashed every exclamatory trick of the lighting designer’s trade to make the show a heart-quickening visual trip, pumped up by Daniel Ezralow’s acrobatic choreography.
Spider-Woman?
Bono and The Edge, mostly out touring with U2 when not at Davos, have dropped in from time to time without changing the songs, which remain loud, dull and unmemorable.
Neither Taymor nor her co-writer, Glen Berger, have found a way to improve the book, a protofeminist stew that foolishly decants the myth of the weaver Arachne into a story that’s incoherent to begin with.
After all this expenditure of talent and money, “Spider- Man” is probably unfixable because too much has gone into making humans fly, which is not what they are good at. It imitates poorly what the “Spider-Man” movies do brilliantly with computer graphics -- and without putting live actors in jeopardy.
They are fine actors. In addition to Carney and Page, I liked Jennifer Damiano, who has little to do as girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, but does it winningly, and Michael Mulheren as crass Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson.
Maybe the show eventually will run for several performances in a row without having to stop to untangle someone. Some triumph.
At the Foxwoods Theatre, 213 W. 42nd St. Information: +1- 877-250-2929; http://spidermanonbroadway.marvel.com. Rating: **
What the Stars Mean:
**** Excellent
*** Very Good
** Average
* Not So Good
(No stars) Avoid
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-07/gorgeous-dumb-spider-man-remains-inert-after-65-previews-jeremy-gerard.html
'Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark' on Broadway: Spidey is stuck in a tangled web
February 07, 2011
“Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark” plays on Broadway at the Foxwoods Theatre, 213 W. 42nd St., New York. (Tickets at 877-850-2929 or www.ticketmaster.com)
BROADWAY REVIEW
NEW YORK — After the $65 million spent, the endless delays, the injuries, the cast changes, the incessant spinning of stories on the Web, Julie Taymor's “Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark” now has to be willing to stand in the light. Deck chairs can be rearranged forever.
This show has delayed its opening so many times that it has become the butt of jokes on talk shows and magazine covers. This review, based on the Jan. 30 performance, appears one day after a previously scheduled opening, and after the last delay that felt even remotely reasonable, given that full-price “previews” have been taking place since Nov. 28. Furthermore, in practical terms, the show has already made what major changes it will be possible to make before the official March opening. Both ticket buyers and the generally curious deserve a review now.
The much-told woes of “Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark” boil down to a problem that has similarly ensnared far humbler new musicals: an incoherent story.
For without a book with consistent rules that a mainstream audience can follow and track, without characters in whom one can invest emotionally, without a sense of the empowering optimism that should come from time spent in the presence of a good, kind man who can walk up buildings and save our lousy world from evil, it is all just clatter and chatter. Delayed openings, physical changes, fresh flying sequences, the toil of dedicated performers and even new musical numbers from U2's Bono and The Edge, no less, cannot fix what should have been solved long before any human performer left the safety of the ground.
In an attempt to connect comic books to grander narratives (and forgetting that comic books already are connected to grander narratives), Taymor and Glen Berger, who share book writing credit, have purloined a character named Arachne from Greco-Roman mythology. Arachne, (in mythology, a mortal weaver who gets turned into a spider) is centrally positioned as both demon and siren of desire for Peter Parker. Too centrally positioned. A smarter producer in the classic David Merrick mold would, in some early meeting, have angrily marched everyone onto 42nd Street and pointed out the name “Spider-Man” blazing on the marquee outside Broadway's Foxwoods Theatre. Not “Arachne.”
But from the rise of the curtain on Arachne, the show disappears inside this mythic creature (severely played by T.V. Carpio), an alienating and charmless aerial stranger to us. Thereafter, neither Patrick Page's cackling Green Goblin (who should be the main diabolic force in the show but here hardly comes into a much more reluctant focus until intermission) nor Jennifer Damiano's Mary Jane, nor the Spider-Man/Peter Parker we came to see, can pull out the narrative thread.
In the first act, that thread wants to tell the familiar tale of Peter (Reeve Carney), adolescent nerd, secretly turning into a superhero, fighting evil by night and swooning over MJ by day. In the midsection, the Green Goblin villain revs up some nastiness and battles Spidey. That continues some into Act 2. But in the second half, Peter/Spidey seems mostly to fight his own duality.
Even that story is buried yet deeper by an outer frame of adolescent comic book fans, or “citizens,” who show up near the top of the show talking about Spider-Man, pop up as narrators throughout, and generally seem to control the inner story we are watching. But it's never clear: Are they watching it? Creating it? Reacting to it? Can they change it? Where are they? When are they? There is no clarity of frame. In fact, even the lines themselves don't track from one to the other in any kind of satisfying way.
In essence, Taymor and Berger tie themselves in knots trying to shove the inherently dualistic nature of melodrama into a psychological hexahedron of their own creation. Great conceptual artists like Taymor are rarely comfortable with melodrama, which has struggled for respect throughout history. Fine. Stay away. But be wary of putting a comic book on the stage.
Time and again, the show runs away from what I suspect the creators feared would be too predictable or cheap, but that we miss. There is no direct Peter-to-Spidey transformation scene. There are no shooting webs (not substantively, anyway). There is no rush of romance. There is no truth. Every time old Spidey gets someone to fight, beyond the eight-legged critter, the villain is immediately defanged by absurdly cartoonish behavior, nixing any of the stakes. His other main foes, The Lizard, Swarm et al., are reduced to a rushed and belated cinematic montage that looks more like a garish version of an outre presentation during Fashion Week. And yet, in other moments, the show is as terrified of its genre as a 1960s mother worried about the eyesight of kids devouring comics under the sheets. Rules change faster than any kid could turn a page.
That's because there is a fundamental discomfort, and thus disconnect, between the material, the artists engaged in its interpretation and the form of the Broadway musical.
Overall, Carney's brooding Peter is so busy dealing with faux-Freudian trauma over his Arachnidan dreams (the two legs of Mary Jane aren't as interesting as eight), that his performance becomes so brooding and internalized he seems to forget how to soar. At the show I saw, Damiano was replaced for reasons unannounced by her much, much warmer understudy Kristen Martin, before the end. But I saw more than enough to see that Damiano is struggling to find her center as Mary Jane. Carney is similarly off-track. It's also not his fault. Peter has normal adolescent problems, for sure, but it doesn't work for him to have so many bad dreams that he gets no pleasure from catching bad guys.
The score is a disappointment. There are two memorable songs, both in the second act: “The Boy Falls From the Sky,” a formatively compelling and melodic ode that Carney sings, and sings very well, and a sweet, wise, suddenly rooted ballad for MJ titled “If The World Should End.” “Bouncing Off the Walls” is fun. Elsewhere, we get what mostly feels like fragments, riffs and mood treatments from masterful musicians who no doubt were as confused as to the aesthetic world here as everyone else. Most disappointing of all is the failure of the score to articulate empowerment.
There is, no question, some engaging aerial work, albeit as devoid of emotional connection as everything else. Some will enjoy the Green Goblin and Spidey wrestling above one's head. There are hardworking performers. And although George Tsypin's set overall is a massively disappointing confusion of styles and shapes, there is one undeniably majestic and revealing moment when our perspective is thrillingly thrown and we see the city, racing down from the top of a skyscraper.
Because the new ending sequence — with Spidey flying around the theater — is the only moment when the show starts to capture some of the spirit of flight, I suspect there is some growing understanding of the cause of all these problems. But those few moments can't compensate for a night wherein overwritten nonsense takes us away from Spider-Man's world, our world, our fantasies, and out, out into some fractured mythic fantasy that needed to get caught in a good old-fashioned net. When it was still a child.
http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2011/02/review-spider-man-turn-off-dark-broadway-chicago-tribune.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+chicagotribune/thetheaterloop+%28Chicago+Tribune+-+The+Theater+Loop%29
“Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark” plays on Broadway at the Foxwoods Theatre, 213 W. 42nd St., New York. (Tickets at 877-850-2929 or www.ticketmaster.com)
BROADWAY REVIEW
NEW YORK — After the $65 million spent, the endless delays, the injuries, the cast changes, the incessant spinning of stories on the Web, Julie Taymor's “Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark” now has to be willing to stand in the light. Deck chairs can be rearranged forever.
This show has delayed its opening so many times that it has become the butt of jokes on talk shows and magazine covers. This review, based on the Jan. 30 performance, appears one day after a previously scheduled opening, and after the last delay that felt even remotely reasonable, given that full-price “previews” have been taking place since Nov. 28. Furthermore, in practical terms, the show has already made what major changes it will be possible to make before the official March opening. Both ticket buyers and the generally curious deserve a review now.
The much-told woes of “Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark” boil down to a problem that has similarly ensnared far humbler new musicals: an incoherent story.
For without a book with consistent rules that a mainstream audience can follow and track, without characters in whom one can invest emotionally, without a sense of the empowering optimism that should come from time spent in the presence of a good, kind man who can walk up buildings and save our lousy world from evil, it is all just clatter and chatter. Delayed openings, physical changes, fresh flying sequences, the toil of dedicated performers and even new musical numbers from U2's Bono and The Edge, no less, cannot fix what should have been solved long before any human performer left the safety of the ground.
In an attempt to connect comic books to grander narratives (and forgetting that comic books already are connected to grander narratives), Taymor and Glen Berger, who share book writing credit, have purloined a character named Arachne from Greco-Roman mythology. Arachne, (in mythology, a mortal weaver who gets turned into a spider) is centrally positioned as both demon and siren of desire for Peter Parker. Too centrally positioned. A smarter producer in the classic David Merrick mold would, in some early meeting, have angrily marched everyone onto 42nd Street and pointed out the name “Spider-Man” blazing on the marquee outside Broadway's Foxwoods Theatre. Not “Arachne.”
But from the rise of the curtain on Arachne, the show disappears inside this mythic creature (severely played by T.V. Carpio), an alienating and charmless aerial stranger to us. Thereafter, neither Patrick Page's cackling Green Goblin (who should be the main diabolic force in the show but here hardly comes into a much more reluctant focus until intermission) nor Jennifer Damiano's Mary Jane, nor the Spider-Man/Peter Parker we came to see, can pull out the narrative thread.
In the first act, that thread wants to tell the familiar tale of Peter (Reeve Carney), adolescent nerd, secretly turning into a superhero, fighting evil by night and swooning over MJ by day. In the midsection, the Green Goblin villain revs up some nastiness and battles Spidey. That continues some into Act 2. But in the second half, Peter/Spidey seems mostly to fight his own duality.
Even that story is buried yet deeper by an outer frame of adolescent comic book fans, or “citizens,” who show up near the top of the show talking about Spider-Man, pop up as narrators throughout, and generally seem to control the inner story we are watching. But it's never clear: Are they watching it? Creating it? Reacting to it? Can they change it? Where are they? When are they? There is no clarity of frame. In fact, even the lines themselves don't track from one to the other in any kind of satisfying way.
In essence, Taymor and Berger tie themselves in knots trying to shove the inherently dualistic nature of melodrama into a psychological hexahedron of their own creation. Great conceptual artists like Taymor are rarely comfortable with melodrama, which has struggled for respect throughout history. Fine. Stay away. But be wary of putting a comic book on the stage.
Time and again, the show runs away from what I suspect the creators feared would be too predictable or cheap, but that we miss. There is no direct Peter-to-Spidey transformation scene. There are no shooting webs (not substantively, anyway). There is no rush of romance. There is no truth. Every time old Spidey gets someone to fight, beyond the eight-legged critter, the villain is immediately defanged by absurdly cartoonish behavior, nixing any of the stakes. His other main foes, The Lizard, Swarm et al., are reduced to a rushed and belated cinematic montage that looks more like a garish version of an outre presentation during Fashion Week. And yet, in other moments, the show is as terrified of its genre as a 1960s mother worried about the eyesight of kids devouring comics under the sheets. Rules change faster than any kid could turn a page.
That's because there is a fundamental discomfort, and thus disconnect, between the material, the artists engaged in its interpretation and the form of the Broadway musical.
Overall, Carney's brooding Peter is so busy dealing with faux-Freudian trauma over his Arachnidan dreams (the two legs of Mary Jane aren't as interesting as eight), that his performance becomes so brooding and internalized he seems to forget how to soar. At the show I saw, Damiano was replaced for reasons unannounced by her much, much warmer understudy Kristen Martin, before the end. But I saw more than enough to see that Damiano is struggling to find her center as Mary Jane. Carney is similarly off-track. It's also not his fault. Peter has normal adolescent problems, for sure, but it doesn't work for him to have so many bad dreams that he gets no pleasure from catching bad guys.
The score is a disappointment. There are two memorable songs, both in the second act: “The Boy Falls From the Sky,” a formatively compelling and melodic ode that Carney sings, and sings very well, and a sweet, wise, suddenly rooted ballad for MJ titled “If The World Should End.” “Bouncing Off the Walls” is fun. Elsewhere, we get what mostly feels like fragments, riffs and mood treatments from masterful musicians who no doubt were as confused as to the aesthetic world here as everyone else. Most disappointing of all is the failure of the score to articulate empowerment.
There is, no question, some engaging aerial work, albeit as devoid of emotional connection as everything else. Some will enjoy the Green Goblin and Spidey wrestling above one's head. There are hardworking performers. And although George Tsypin's set overall is a massively disappointing confusion of styles and shapes, there is one undeniably majestic and revealing moment when our perspective is thrillingly thrown and we see the city, racing down from the top of a skyscraper.
Because the new ending sequence — with Spidey flying around the theater — is the only moment when the show starts to capture some of the spirit of flight, I suspect there is some growing understanding of the cause of all these problems. But those few moments can't compensate for a night wherein overwritten nonsense takes us away from Spider-Man's world, our world, our fantasies, and out, out into some fractured mythic fantasy that needed to get caught in a good old-fashioned net. When it was still a child.
http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2011/02/review-spider-man-turn-off-dark-broadway-chicago-tribune.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+chicagotribune/thetheaterloop+%28Chicago+Tribune+-+The+Theater+Loop%29
Theater review: 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' at Foxwoods Theatre
February 7, 2011 | 3:54 pm
Well, it turns out there is a valid reason the producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” have been keeping critics at bay. Julie Taymor's $65-million, accident-prone production, featuring an erratic score by U2’s Bono and The Edge, is a teetering colossus that can’t find its bearings as a circus spectacle or as a rock musical.
The endlessly postponed official opening was last moved from Feb. 7 to March 15, but the battle over health care reform has a better shot at being resolved before the manifold problems of this frenetic Broadway jumble get fixed.
In the meantime, “Spider-Man” has been making lucrative lemonade out of all the lemons the media has thrown an embarrassing spotlight on. (The show, previewing since late November at the Foxwoods Theatre, has already beaten “Wicked” in the weekly box office tallies.) Not even a nuclear bomb detonation, as the satiric newspaper the Onion joked, can stop this juggernaut, which has survived financial crises, a spate of cast member injuries and enough bad press to sink a presidential candidate.
But the time has come to assess the work, not the hullabaloo surrounding it. So much emphasis has been placed on the technological hurdles, the notion that “Spider-Man” is trying things that have never been attempted before in a Broadway house. What sinks the show, however, has nothing to do with glitches in the special effects. To revise a handy little political catch phrase, “It’s the storytelling, stupid.” And on that front, the failure rests squarely on Taymor’s run-amok direction.
This is, after all, her vision, and it’s a vision that has been indulged with too many resources, artistic and financial. The production, lacking the clarity that's born out of tough choices, adds when it should subtract, accelerates when it should slow down. Taymor’s inventive staging of “The Lion King” was a victory for the craft and commerce of theater alike. But the investors of “Spider-Man” have inadvertently bankrolled an artistic form of megalomania.
The book, by Taymor and Glen Berger, is an absolute farrago, setting up layers and subplots before the main narrative line has been established. A female spider figure from Classical mythology named Arachne (T.V. Carpio) has been introduced, mucking up the traditional Marvel tale. There’s even a chorus, a group of comic-book-addicted kids, who at first appear to be joshing fans of the “Spider-Man” saga but later seem to be actually inventing the tedious version unfolding before us. Apparently, they’re the creative team’s surrogates. Not that it matters much in the end. The conceit is dispensed with as the second act transforms into a video game, interrupted by high-flying shenanigans that had many in the audience nervously bowing their heads as human cartoons swooshed above them.
The biggest shame in all of this is that the leads — Reeve Carney, who plays Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and Jennifer Damiano, who plays Peter’s love interest, Mary Jane — are utterly captivating. Their appealing sensitivity, however, is no match for the machine they’re trapped in. Forget about the snarling threats of the Green Goblin (Patrick Page decked in a verdant, plasticky getup that would seem obvious even for a Halloween parade) — the real villainy is Taymor’s overreaching desire to top herself.
The music is hit or miss, with three screechers for every rousing cri de coeur rock ballad. But the show is most alive when the sound that Bono and The Edge made famous connects to the emotional predicament of Peter Parker, who’s torn between the demands of crime-fighting and the dictates of his own homebody heart. The best numbers, “No More,” “Bouncing Off the Walls” (thrillingly staged as the title suggests) and “If the World Should End,” emerge from the protagonist’s or Mary Jane's inner state of being. Too much else, unfortunately, is a cacophonous brew.
The visual world of the production is more confusing than mesmerizing. Taymor, working with a fleet of designers, seems unable to settle on a style, bounding between comic-book cut-outs and expensive sci-fi gadgetry, between ingenious thrift and galumphing glitz. It would be pointless to sort out the hodgepodge of historical eras, but, among other jarring incongruities, there's a reference to the Internet at a newsroom so comically old school it would seem to predate Clark Kent.
Incoherence isn’t much fun to sit through. The two friends who attended Friday night's performance with me, a fashion executive and a filmmaker, both regular New York theatergoers, were muttering to each other before the first act was done. My fashion industry friend, who bought the tickets, spent the second act savoring a martini at the bar at Sardi’s. The filmmaker stuck it out with me, hoping against hope that Taymor’s vision would somehow pull itself together. The poor guy left Foxwoods feeling as though he had been lured inside someone's psychotic hallucination.
The aerial antics were impressive to an acrophobic like me. I feared for the actors’ safety, though, stupidly or not, I managed to convince myself that every safety measure was being employed. But there’s a kiddie show aspect to these soaring stunts that seems at odds with a spectacle that many will find too complicated, brooding and weirdly suggestive for young children.
Who exactly is “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” for anyway? The only answer I can come up with is an audience of Julie Taymor types who care only about panoramic sensibility— a bit of slow-mo choreography here, a smattering of diabolical mask work there. Much as I enjoyed the clever shifts in perspective during the skyscraper scenes, it was hard for me to picture adults or young people yearning for a second visit, never mind critics who may feel obliged to check back in with the production when (or should I say if?) it officially opens. Nothing cures the curiosity about "Spider-Man" quite like seeing it.
Perhaps this is why the show’s long-term prospects seem to me nearly as grim as the fate of Bette Davis' character in another work with 'dark' in the title — “Dark Victory.” Not since that 1939 weeper have the words "prognosis negative" seemed so apt.
Related:
Critic's Notebook: 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' needs some light shed on it by critics, and soon
--Charles McNulty
twitter.com\charlesmcnulty
charles.mcnulty@latimes.com
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/02/theater-review-spider-man-turn-off-the-dark-at-foxwoods-theatre.html
Well, it turns out there is a valid reason the producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” have been keeping critics at bay. Julie Taymor's $65-million, accident-prone production, featuring an erratic score by U2’s Bono and The Edge, is a teetering colossus that can’t find its bearings as a circus spectacle or as a rock musical.
The endlessly postponed official opening was last moved from Feb. 7 to March 15, but the battle over health care reform has a better shot at being resolved before the manifold problems of this frenetic Broadway jumble get fixed.
In the meantime, “Spider-Man” has been making lucrative lemonade out of all the lemons the media has thrown an embarrassing spotlight on. (The show, previewing since late November at the Foxwoods Theatre, has already beaten “Wicked” in the weekly box office tallies.) Not even a nuclear bomb detonation, as the satiric newspaper the Onion joked, can stop this juggernaut, which has survived financial crises, a spate of cast member injuries and enough bad press to sink a presidential candidate.
But the time has come to assess the work, not the hullabaloo surrounding it. So much emphasis has been placed on the technological hurdles, the notion that “Spider-Man” is trying things that have never been attempted before in a Broadway house. What sinks the show, however, has nothing to do with glitches in the special effects. To revise a handy little political catch phrase, “It’s the storytelling, stupid.” And on that front, the failure rests squarely on Taymor’s run-amok direction.
This is, after all, her vision, and it’s a vision that has been indulged with too many resources, artistic and financial. The production, lacking the clarity that's born out of tough choices, adds when it should subtract, accelerates when it should slow down. Taymor’s inventive staging of “The Lion King” was a victory for the craft and commerce of theater alike. But the investors of “Spider-Man” have inadvertently bankrolled an artistic form of megalomania.
The book, by Taymor and Glen Berger, is an absolute farrago, setting up layers and subplots before the main narrative line has been established. A female spider figure from Classical mythology named Arachne (T.V. Carpio) has been introduced, mucking up the traditional Marvel tale. There’s even a chorus, a group of comic-book-addicted kids, who at first appear to be joshing fans of the “Spider-Man” saga but later seem to be actually inventing the tedious version unfolding before us. Apparently, they’re the creative team’s surrogates. Not that it matters much in the end. The conceit is dispensed with as the second act transforms into a video game, interrupted by high-flying shenanigans that had many in the audience nervously bowing their heads as human cartoons swooshed above them.
The biggest shame in all of this is that the leads — Reeve Carney, who plays Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and Jennifer Damiano, who plays Peter’s love interest, Mary Jane — are utterly captivating. Their appealing sensitivity, however, is no match for the machine they’re trapped in. Forget about the snarling threats of the Green Goblin (Patrick Page decked in a verdant, plasticky getup that would seem obvious even for a Halloween parade) — the real villainy is Taymor’s overreaching desire to top herself.
The music is hit or miss, with three screechers for every rousing cri de coeur rock ballad. But the show is most alive when the sound that Bono and The Edge made famous connects to the emotional predicament of Peter Parker, who’s torn between the demands of crime-fighting and the dictates of his own homebody heart. The best numbers, “No More,” “Bouncing Off the Walls” (thrillingly staged as the title suggests) and “If the World Should End,” emerge from the protagonist’s or Mary Jane's inner state of being. Too much else, unfortunately, is a cacophonous brew.
The visual world of the production is more confusing than mesmerizing. Taymor, working with a fleet of designers, seems unable to settle on a style, bounding between comic-book cut-outs and expensive sci-fi gadgetry, between ingenious thrift and galumphing glitz. It would be pointless to sort out the hodgepodge of historical eras, but, among other jarring incongruities, there's a reference to the Internet at a newsroom so comically old school it would seem to predate Clark Kent.
Incoherence isn’t much fun to sit through. The two friends who attended Friday night's performance with me, a fashion executive and a filmmaker, both regular New York theatergoers, were muttering to each other before the first act was done. My fashion industry friend, who bought the tickets, spent the second act savoring a martini at the bar at Sardi’s. The filmmaker stuck it out with me, hoping against hope that Taymor’s vision would somehow pull itself together. The poor guy left Foxwoods feeling as though he had been lured inside someone's psychotic hallucination.
The aerial antics were impressive to an acrophobic like me. I feared for the actors’ safety, though, stupidly or not, I managed to convince myself that every safety measure was being employed. But there’s a kiddie show aspect to these soaring stunts that seems at odds with a spectacle that many will find too complicated, brooding and weirdly suggestive for young children.
Who exactly is “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” for anyway? The only answer I can come up with is an audience of Julie Taymor types who care only about panoramic sensibility— a bit of slow-mo choreography here, a smattering of diabolical mask work there. Much as I enjoyed the clever shifts in perspective during the skyscraper scenes, it was hard for me to picture adults or young people yearning for a second visit, never mind critics who may feel obliged to check back in with the production when (or should I say if?) it officially opens. Nothing cures the curiosity about "Spider-Man" quite like seeing it.
Perhaps this is why the show’s long-term prospects seem to me nearly as grim as the fate of Bette Davis' character in another work with 'dark' in the title — “Dark Victory.” Not since that 1939 weeper have the words "prognosis negative" seemed so apt.
Related:
Critic's Notebook: 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' needs some light shed on it by critics, and soon
--Charles McNulty
twitter.com\charlesmcnulty
charles.mcnulty@latimes.com
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/02/theater-review-spider-man-turn-off-the-dark-at-foxwoods-theatre.html
'Spider-Man' Musical Review: 'Chaotic, Dull and a Little Silly'
8:19 PM 2/7/2011 by David Rooney
The big shock when sitting down finally to assess this $65 million web-slinging folly, is what a monumental anti-climax it turns out to be.
NEW YORK – As the dominant parent of the problem child Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, Julie Taymor does herself no favors by including a program note about a mythological creature brought down by hubris. In an ungainly mess of a show that smacks of out-of-control auteurial arrogance, the parallel speaks for itself.
Official opening is not until March 15, but following repeat postponements and what feels like 30 years of previews, The Hollywood Reporter is observing the previously scheduled opening of Feb. 7 with this review. The capitalization hiccups, cast reshuffles, technical glitches and series of injuries have been too exhaustively chronicled to require a recap here. But the big shock when sitting down finally to assess this $65 million web-slinging folly, is what a monumental anti-climax it turns out to be.
Sure, there’s still five pre-opening weeks to keep tinkering, but the point at which any savvy producer would have sent for script doctors is long past. While much has been said about the decision to begin performances without an ending in place, this “rock circus drama” has no beginning or middle either.
There’s one thrillingly beautiful image about ten minutes in -- during a song appropriately titled “Behold and Wonder” -- as aerialists suspended from saffron-colored sashes weave an undulating fabric wall that fills the stage. And the impressive speed and agility of the flying sequences is a major leap forward in action terms from the slow glide of Mary Poppins.
But mostly, Spider-Man is chaotic, dull and a little silly. And there’s nothing here half as catchy as the 1967 ABC cartoon theme tune.
The absence of the word “musical” from Taymor’s definition of the show seems key. The songs by Bono and The Edge display minimal grasp of music’s function in goosing narrative or illuminating character. And despite all the wailing-guitar attitude, they only squeak by as atmospheric enhancement. Aside from one or two stirring anthems in familiar messianic U2 mode, this is strictly album filler, with echoes of everyone from T. Rex to Alice Cooper, plus an occasional nod to The Who’s Tommy. The lyrics – when you can decipher them – are either too vague or too literal.
But an underwhelming score is the least of the show’s worries. What really sinks it is the borderline incoherence of its storytelling.
Diehard fans of the Marvel Comics classic or Sam Raimi’s big-screen iterations are likely to be irked by the dismissive handling of the origin story in Taymor and co-writer Glen Berger’s book.
Establishing scenes with Peter Parker (Reeve Carney) and Mary Jane (Jennifer Damiano), the death of Uncle Ben (Ken Marks), the entomological experimentation of mad scientist Norman Osborn (Patrick Page), Peter’s radioactive spider bite and Osborn’s transformation into the Green Goblin are all dealt with almost perfunctorily.
You sense Taymor’s impatience with this nuts-and-bolts stuff as she keeps digressing to check in on a useless “Geek Chorus” of comic-strip fanatics. Their debates over the direction the action should take succeed only in bringing it to a halt.
The director’s strength has always been creating stage pictures and visual coups, not developing characters or story, so it’s perhaps no surprise that everything between Spidey’s first flight and his overhead Green Goblin battle is a shapeless blur.
But it’s in the second act that internal logic disintegrates. That’s when Taymor’s interpolation from Ovid steps out of the shadows. A mortal who took on the Goddess Athena in a weave-off and won, Arachne (T.V. Carpio) was transformed into a spider. Exiled to the astral plane, she eyes Peter as the man-candy to end her loneliness.
Arachne launches her initial attack via an illusory band of supervillains dubbed the Sinister Six, whose “Ugly Pageant” is among the show’s more superfluous set-pieces. Their clashes with Spider-Man also expose the limited applications of stage ingenuity to this type of action, relying on filmed inserts that look like generic video-game samples.
The show really jumps the shark, however, in a number titled “Deeply Furious,” in which Arachne and her Furies go shoe-shopping before entering the human world. Seriously. The much-ballyhooed climactic face-off between Spidey and Arachne is now in place, but the diminishing returns of the airborne sequences rob the ending of excitement.
Like choreographer Daniel Ezralow’s flying work, George Tsypin’s designs also dilute their impact through repetition. Taking his cue from the Marvel superhero’s co-creator Steve Ditko by way of Fritz Lang, Tsypin fills the stage with looming skyscrapers and vertiginous columns, making striking use of forced perspective. Eiko Ishioka’s villain costumes plunder a different comic-strip source, borrowing their grotesque exaggerations from Dick Tracy. But the sameness and cluttered disharmony of the visuals becomes wearing.
The cast do fine within the limited scope of their roles, and Carney, Damiano and Carpio all have expressive voices. But only Page as the larger-than-life Osborn/Goblin fleshes out a character.
Spider-Man at least can be considered a success in making Broadway part of the pop-cultural conversation, and ticket sales have boomed. How long they will continue to do so is the question. For rubberneckers eager to see what the fuss is about, there may be enough noisy spectacle here to convince them they’ve seen something. But when this amount of time and money is tossed at a show, even demanding theatergoers should be awed, not bored.
Music and lyrics: Bono, The Edge
Book: Julie Taymor, Glen Berger
Director: Julie Taymor
Choreography/aerial choreography: Daniel Ezralow
Set designer: George Tsypin
Costume designer: Eiko Ishioka
Lighting designer: Donald Holder
Sound designer: Jonathan Deans
Projection designer: Kyle Cooper
Aerial design: Scott Rogers
Arrangements/orchestrations: David Campbell
Presented by Michael Cohl & Jeremiah J. Harris, Land Line Productions, Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle/Tony Adams, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Norton Herrick and Herrick Entertainment, Billy Rovzar & Fernando Rovzar, Jeffrey B. Hecktman, Omneity Entertainment/Richard G. Weinberg, James L. Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, S2BN Entertainment, Jam Theatricals, The Mayerson/Gould/Hauser/Tysoe Group, Patricia Lambrecht, Paul McGuinness, by arrangement with Marvel Entertainment.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/spider-man-musical-review-chaotic-97241
The big shock when sitting down finally to assess this $65 million web-slinging folly, is what a monumental anti-climax it turns out to be.
NEW YORK – As the dominant parent of the problem child Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, Julie Taymor does herself no favors by including a program note about a mythological creature brought down by hubris. In an ungainly mess of a show that smacks of out-of-control auteurial arrogance, the parallel speaks for itself.
Official opening is not until March 15, but following repeat postponements and what feels like 30 years of previews, The Hollywood Reporter is observing the previously scheduled opening of Feb. 7 with this review. The capitalization hiccups, cast reshuffles, technical glitches and series of injuries have been too exhaustively chronicled to require a recap here. But the big shock when sitting down finally to assess this $65 million web-slinging folly, is what a monumental anti-climax it turns out to be.
Sure, there’s still five pre-opening weeks to keep tinkering, but the point at which any savvy producer would have sent for script doctors is long past. While much has been said about the decision to begin performances without an ending in place, this “rock circus drama” has no beginning or middle either.
There’s one thrillingly beautiful image about ten minutes in -- during a song appropriately titled “Behold and Wonder” -- as aerialists suspended from saffron-colored sashes weave an undulating fabric wall that fills the stage. And the impressive speed and agility of the flying sequences is a major leap forward in action terms from the slow glide of Mary Poppins.
But mostly, Spider-Man is chaotic, dull and a little silly. And there’s nothing here half as catchy as the 1967 ABC cartoon theme tune.
The absence of the word “musical” from Taymor’s definition of the show seems key. The songs by Bono and The Edge display minimal grasp of music’s function in goosing narrative or illuminating character. And despite all the wailing-guitar attitude, they only squeak by as atmospheric enhancement. Aside from one or two stirring anthems in familiar messianic U2 mode, this is strictly album filler, with echoes of everyone from T. Rex to Alice Cooper, plus an occasional nod to The Who’s Tommy. The lyrics – when you can decipher them – are either too vague or too literal.
But an underwhelming score is the least of the show’s worries. What really sinks it is the borderline incoherence of its storytelling.
Diehard fans of the Marvel Comics classic or Sam Raimi’s big-screen iterations are likely to be irked by the dismissive handling of the origin story in Taymor and co-writer Glen Berger’s book.
Establishing scenes with Peter Parker (Reeve Carney) and Mary Jane (Jennifer Damiano), the death of Uncle Ben (Ken Marks), the entomological experimentation of mad scientist Norman Osborn (Patrick Page), Peter’s radioactive spider bite and Osborn’s transformation into the Green Goblin are all dealt with almost perfunctorily.
You sense Taymor’s impatience with this nuts-and-bolts stuff as she keeps digressing to check in on a useless “Geek Chorus” of comic-strip fanatics. Their debates over the direction the action should take succeed only in bringing it to a halt.
The director’s strength has always been creating stage pictures and visual coups, not developing characters or story, so it’s perhaps no surprise that everything between Spidey’s first flight and his overhead Green Goblin battle is a shapeless blur.
But it’s in the second act that internal logic disintegrates. That’s when Taymor’s interpolation from Ovid steps out of the shadows. A mortal who took on the Goddess Athena in a weave-off and won, Arachne (T.V. Carpio) was transformed into a spider. Exiled to the astral plane, she eyes Peter as the man-candy to end her loneliness.
Arachne launches her initial attack via an illusory band of supervillains dubbed the Sinister Six, whose “Ugly Pageant” is among the show’s more superfluous set-pieces. Their clashes with Spider-Man also expose the limited applications of stage ingenuity to this type of action, relying on filmed inserts that look like generic video-game samples.
The show really jumps the shark, however, in a number titled “Deeply Furious,” in which Arachne and her Furies go shoe-shopping before entering the human world. Seriously. The much-ballyhooed climactic face-off between Spidey and Arachne is now in place, but the diminishing returns of the airborne sequences rob the ending of excitement.
Like choreographer Daniel Ezralow’s flying work, George Tsypin’s designs also dilute their impact through repetition. Taking his cue from the Marvel superhero’s co-creator Steve Ditko by way of Fritz Lang, Tsypin fills the stage with looming skyscrapers and vertiginous columns, making striking use of forced perspective. Eiko Ishioka’s villain costumes plunder a different comic-strip source, borrowing their grotesque exaggerations from Dick Tracy. But the sameness and cluttered disharmony of the visuals becomes wearing.
The cast do fine within the limited scope of their roles, and Carney, Damiano and Carpio all have expressive voices. But only Page as the larger-than-life Osborn/Goblin fleshes out a character.
Spider-Man at least can be considered a success in making Broadway part of the pop-cultural conversation, and ticket sales have boomed. How long they will continue to do so is the question. For rubberneckers eager to see what the fuss is about, there may be enough noisy spectacle here to convince them they’ve seen something. But when this amount of time and money is tossed at a show, even demanding theatergoers should be awed, not bored.
Music and lyrics: Bono, The Edge
Book: Julie Taymor, Glen Berger
Director: Julie Taymor
Choreography/aerial choreography: Daniel Ezralow
Set designer: George Tsypin
Costume designer: Eiko Ishioka
Lighting designer: Donald Holder
Sound designer: Jonathan Deans
Projection designer: Kyle Cooper
Aerial design: Scott Rogers
Arrangements/orchestrations: David Campbell
Presented by Michael Cohl & Jeremiah J. Harris, Land Line Productions, Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle/Tony Adams, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Norton Herrick and Herrick Entertainment, Billy Rovzar & Fernando Rovzar, Jeffrey B. Hecktman, Omneity Entertainment/Richard G. Weinberg, James L. Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, S2BN Entertainment, Jam Theatricals, The Mayerson/Gould/Hauser/Tysoe Group, Patricia Lambrecht, Paul McGuinness, by arrangement with Marvel Entertainment.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/spider-man-musical-review-chaotic-97241
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
(Foxwoods; $140 top/$275 premium)
By Steven Suskin
A Michael Cohl & Jeremiah J. Harris (et al) presentation of a musical in two acts with music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge, book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger. Directed by Taymor, choreography and aerial choreography by Daniel Ezralow. Music direction by Kimberly Grigsby.
With: Reeve Carney, Jennifer Damiano, T.V. Carpio, Patrick Page and a cast of 39.
After 10 playing weeks and some $12,500,000-worth of tickets, the attractions of "Spider-Man" are still in the spectacular physical production, and if the audience at Saturday's matinee preview was not standing and cheering, they still could be described as warmly appreciative. It's a work in progress, and creator Julie Taymor has been making changes through the preview period, and is reportedly planning to continue to rework the musical numbers (within the framework of the existing music and lyrics). Weaknesses lie with the book, music and lyrics, a kiss of death for most musicals; Taymor and her producers seem to think this a minor flaw, and initial box office returns suggest they might be right.
The Spider-people have compared their situation to a traditional pre-Broadway tryout, with months of changes prior to the Broadway opening; but in most other cases, the major activity is the time-consuming job of removing songs that don't work and writing replacements that will. With the exception of the opening number (which seems derived from music used elsewhere in the show), the current song-list is identical to preview #1; songwriters Bono and The Edge, who are off on a U2 tour, have indicated that they have not and will not write new songs.
At preview No. 64, the first major aerial sequence of the show, 42 minutes in, was halted by some tech glitches. Once airborne, though, the sequence is impressive, and the second is an amazing aerial fight waged over the heads of the patrons in prime orchestra seats. The second act flights are considerably less exciting, except for one with the resident spider woman and five other flying gals. This one is a visual feast, heightened by a combination of lights, projections, and colored webs.
Story, which follows four nerdy teenagers as they devise the adventures of a teenaged superhero from Queens, is sketchy and ill-formed. Some of the dialogue, by Taymor and Glen Berger, seems ad-libbed on the spot and there are a couple of big holes in the story. (A major plot development centers on photos taken of Spider-Man by Peter Parker, but how does he take close-ups of himself while he is fighting?)
The performers are somewhat smothered by effects. Jennifer Damiano, late of "Next to Normal," stands out as the embattled heroine; Matthew James Thomas, on as standby to leading man Reeve Carney, was perfectly likable. Otherwise, only Michael Mulheren manages to break through the material.
The music and lyrics are less of a score than an endless and repetitive soundtrack; it is something of a surprise when the second act suddenly provides two effective songs ("Turn Off the Dark," "If the World Should End"). Two lead guitarists stand on the stage-right apron throughout the performance, often looking bored. Presumably the changes will include intensive surgery on "Deeply Furious," the spiders-in-high-heels number which is fast developing into musical-theater legend.
Sidebar: Broadway Tryout
Variety has a longstanding practice of reviewing stage shows in out-of-town tryouts. This review is consistent with that, except that "out of town" in this case is in the center of Manhattan.
"Spider-Man" began previews Nov. 28, targeting a Dec. 21 bow. The opening was pushed to Jan. 11, then Feb. 7, and currently March 15. Facing hints that critics were planning to observe the Feb. 7 date, the producers last week protested that the show "will be ready for review when the artists who are creating this show deem it ready." Variety will run a complete review when the show officially opens.
For the record, despite a recent run-in with the New York City Dept. of Consumer Affairs, there was no visible signage at the Foxwoods (formerly Ford/Hilton) indicating that this was a preview performance and that refunds/exchanges were available.
Set, George Tsypin; costumes, Eiko Ishioka; lighting, Donald Holder; sound, Jonathan Deans; projections, Kyle Cooper; masks, Taymor; orchestrations, David Campbell; production stage managers, C. Randall White and Kathleen E. Purvis. Reviewed Feb. 5, 2011. Running time: 2 HOURS, 35 MIN (plus stoppage time).
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117944526
By Steven Suskin
A Michael Cohl & Jeremiah J. Harris (et al) presentation of a musical in two acts with music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge, book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger. Directed by Taymor, choreography and aerial choreography by Daniel Ezralow. Music direction by Kimberly Grigsby.
With: Reeve Carney, Jennifer Damiano, T.V. Carpio, Patrick Page and a cast of 39.
After 10 playing weeks and some $12,500,000-worth of tickets, the attractions of "Spider-Man" are still in the spectacular physical production, and if the audience at Saturday's matinee preview was not standing and cheering, they still could be described as warmly appreciative. It's a work in progress, and creator Julie Taymor has been making changes through the preview period, and is reportedly planning to continue to rework the musical numbers (within the framework of the existing music and lyrics). Weaknesses lie with the book, music and lyrics, a kiss of death for most musicals; Taymor and her producers seem to think this a minor flaw, and initial box office returns suggest they might be right.
The Spider-people have compared their situation to a traditional pre-Broadway tryout, with months of changes prior to the Broadway opening; but in most other cases, the major activity is the time-consuming job of removing songs that don't work and writing replacements that will. With the exception of the opening number (which seems derived from music used elsewhere in the show), the current song-list is identical to preview #1; songwriters Bono and The Edge, who are off on a U2 tour, have indicated that they have not and will not write new songs.
At preview No. 64, the first major aerial sequence of the show, 42 minutes in, was halted by some tech glitches. Once airborne, though, the sequence is impressive, and the second is an amazing aerial fight waged over the heads of the patrons in prime orchestra seats. The second act flights are considerably less exciting, except for one with the resident spider woman and five other flying gals. This one is a visual feast, heightened by a combination of lights, projections, and colored webs.
Story, which follows four nerdy teenagers as they devise the adventures of a teenaged superhero from Queens, is sketchy and ill-formed. Some of the dialogue, by Taymor and Glen Berger, seems ad-libbed on the spot and there are a couple of big holes in the story. (A major plot development centers on photos taken of Spider-Man by Peter Parker, but how does he take close-ups of himself while he is fighting?)
The performers are somewhat smothered by effects. Jennifer Damiano, late of "Next to Normal," stands out as the embattled heroine; Matthew James Thomas, on as standby to leading man Reeve Carney, was perfectly likable. Otherwise, only Michael Mulheren manages to break through the material.
The music and lyrics are less of a score than an endless and repetitive soundtrack; it is something of a surprise when the second act suddenly provides two effective songs ("Turn Off the Dark," "If the World Should End"). Two lead guitarists stand on the stage-right apron throughout the performance, often looking bored. Presumably the changes will include intensive surgery on "Deeply Furious," the spiders-in-high-heels number which is fast developing into musical-theater legend.
Sidebar: Broadway Tryout
Variety has a longstanding practice of reviewing stage shows in out-of-town tryouts. This review is consistent with that, except that "out of town" in this case is in the center of Manhattan.
"Spider-Man" began previews Nov. 28, targeting a Dec. 21 bow. The opening was pushed to Jan. 11, then Feb. 7, and currently March 15. Facing hints that critics were planning to observe the Feb. 7 date, the producers last week protested that the show "will be ready for review when the artists who are creating this show deem it ready." Variety will run a complete review when the show officially opens.
For the record, despite a recent run-in with the New York City Dept. of Consumer Affairs, there was no visible signage at the Foxwoods (formerly Ford/Hilton) indicating that this was a preview performance and that refunds/exchanges were available.
Set, George Tsypin; costumes, Eiko Ishioka; lighting, Donald Holder; sound, Jonathan Deans; projections, Kyle Cooper; masks, Taymor; orchestrations, David Campbell; production stage managers, C. Randall White and Kathleen E. Purvis. Reviewed Feb. 5, 2011. Running time: 2 HOURS, 35 MIN (plus stoppage time).
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117944526
Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark - the not-so-super hero of Broadway
After the official press night of a troubled musical based on the classic Marvel comic book is postponed - yet again - The Daily Telegraph's theatre critic loses patience and buys a ticket to find out whether the show is as bad as they say. The answer: Yes, it is.
By Charles Spencer, Theatre Critic 10:00PM GMT 06 Feb 2011
Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark
Foxwoods Theatre, New York
Never mind turning off the dark. I spent much of this dreadful new musical muttering Please, Lord, make it stop.
And sometimes, miraculously, it did. Though the show has been previewing since last November, and audiences are being charged almost $300 for a top price ticket, the performance I saw on Saturday night twice ground to a halt in the first half. "Sorry folks, just a moment and we'll be back with you," a harassed voice announced over the public address system as the chief villain of the piece, the Green Goblin, dangled helplessly over the audience for several minutes, stuck on the wire on which he was supposed to be flying.
Just a few minutes earlier he and Spidey had to improvise to fill another hiatus as something else went wrong and the show was stopped. Spider-Man poured himself a glass of stage champagne only to receive a stern warning from the goblin. "Careful," said the actor Patrick Page. "You've got to fly over the heads of the audience and I hear they dropped a few," he joked in a reference to the accidents that have bedevilled this production, landing several actors in hospital with serious injuries. It was, by some distance, the most entertaining moment of the entire show.
After numerous postponements, Spider-Man still doesn't officially open until next month, but theatre critics are now breaking the embargo, deciding it is ridiculous not to review a show that has already been running for more than two months, and is doing huge business at the box office.
Technical hitches aside, there is no time to make major improvements now, and the musical strikes me as being beyond salvation.
The director Julie Taymor, who was responsible for the hugely enjoyable stage version of Disney's The Lion King, has come up with a dire script in collaboration with Glen Berger. Not only does she drag the ancient Greek myth of Arachne into the storyline, a brilliant weaver who was turned into a spider by the goddess Athena, she has also added a Geek Chorus (geddit?) of nerdy comic-book fans who are supposed to be making up the narrative as the show progresses. As a result the production often seems both baffling and pretentious. We are a long way here from the guilty pleasures of the Marvel comic-books and the terrific Spider-Man movies.
There's a leaden lack of humour about most of the script, and though the flying sequences are exciting when they work (and even more fun when they don't) there is nothing here to match the thrills, skills and sheer imagination of Cirque du Soleil at its best.
But perhaps the biggest bummer of all is the score, written by Bono and The Edge from U2, and containing not a single memorable song in the course of the show's punishing two-and-three-quarter hours. Simultaneously grandiose and banal, the music never really rocks and sounds like a series of rejected demos for an album that never got made. Sure, it creates a moody film-noir atmosphere at times, but where are the big take-home tunes?
The designs are impressive, conjuring up a dystopian vision of New York, and the cast perform as if they really believe in the dire material they are lumbered with. Reeve Carney has a winning charm and moments of real anguish as Peter Parker, the reluctant super-hero; Jennifer Damiano makes a sexy, spirited heroine as his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson and Page proves a splendidly camp over-the-top villain as the mad scientist Norman Osborn who is transformed into the even nastier Green Goblin.
Unfortunately none of their game efforts are enough to save this 65-million-dollar sinking ship, which goes down with all hands.
* One star
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8306871/Spider-Man-Turn-off-the-Dark-the-not-so-super-hero-of-Broadway.html
By Charles Spencer, Theatre Critic 10:00PM GMT 06 Feb 2011
Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark
Foxwoods Theatre, New York
Never mind turning off the dark. I spent much of this dreadful new musical muttering Please, Lord, make it stop.
And sometimes, miraculously, it did. Though the show has been previewing since last November, and audiences are being charged almost $300 for a top price ticket, the performance I saw on Saturday night twice ground to a halt in the first half. "Sorry folks, just a moment and we'll be back with you," a harassed voice announced over the public address system as the chief villain of the piece, the Green Goblin, dangled helplessly over the audience for several minutes, stuck on the wire on which he was supposed to be flying.
Just a few minutes earlier he and Spidey had to improvise to fill another hiatus as something else went wrong and the show was stopped. Spider-Man poured himself a glass of stage champagne only to receive a stern warning from the goblin. "Careful," said the actor Patrick Page. "You've got to fly over the heads of the audience and I hear they dropped a few," he joked in a reference to the accidents that have bedevilled this production, landing several actors in hospital with serious injuries. It was, by some distance, the most entertaining moment of the entire show.
After numerous postponements, Spider-Man still doesn't officially open until next month, but theatre critics are now breaking the embargo, deciding it is ridiculous not to review a show that has already been running for more than two months, and is doing huge business at the box office.
Technical hitches aside, there is no time to make major improvements now, and the musical strikes me as being beyond salvation.
The director Julie Taymor, who was responsible for the hugely enjoyable stage version of Disney's The Lion King, has come up with a dire script in collaboration with Glen Berger. Not only does she drag the ancient Greek myth of Arachne into the storyline, a brilliant weaver who was turned into a spider by the goddess Athena, she has also added a Geek Chorus (geddit?) of nerdy comic-book fans who are supposed to be making up the narrative as the show progresses. As a result the production often seems both baffling and pretentious. We are a long way here from the guilty pleasures of the Marvel comic-books and the terrific Spider-Man movies.
There's a leaden lack of humour about most of the script, and though the flying sequences are exciting when they work (and even more fun when they don't) there is nothing here to match the thrills, skills and sheer imagination of Cirque du Soleil at its best.
But perhaps the biggest bummer of all is the score, written by Bono and The Edge from U2, and containing not a single memorable song in the course of the show's punishing two-and-three-quarter hours. Simultaneously grandiose and banal, the music never really rocks and sounds like a series of rejected demos for an album that never got made. Sure, it creates a moody film-noir atmosphere at times, but where are the big take-home tunes?
The designs are impressive, conjuring up a dystopian vision of New York, and the cast perform as if they really believe in the dire material they are lumbered with. Reeve Carney has a winning charm and moments of real anguish as Peter Parker, the reluctant super-hero; Jennifer Damiano makes a sexy, spirited heroine as his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson and Page proves a splendidly camp over-the-top villain as the mad scientist Norman Osborn who is transformed into the even nastier Green Goblin.
Unfortunately none of their game efforts are enough to save this 65-million-dollar sinking ship, which goes down with all hands.
* One star
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8306871/Spider-Man-Turn-off-the-Dark-the-not-so-super-hero-of-Broadway.html
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