Simon Plant
From: Herald Sun
May 28, 2011 12:00AM
THE man who wrote Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and The Phantom of the Opera knows a hit when he sees one.
So, right after he saw the first dress rehearsal in London of his Phantom sequel, Love Never Dies, Lord Lloyd Webber rang his wife, Madeleine Gurdon, and said: "Darling, it's not going to work.
"I'm sorry, we'll make the best of it, but it isn't."
That was March last year. Flash forward to Melbourne a week ago. Lloyd Webber is in the stalls of the Regent Theatre to view the first run-through of a radically different Australian version of Love Never Dies starring two relative unknowns: Ben Lewis as the Phantom and Anna O'Byrne as Christine.
Later that evening, the world's most successful living composer rings his wife and says: "I've got to tell you, it's the other end of the scale. This one is bliss!"
What happened in between could almost make a musical. How Lloyd Webber overcame harsh reviews and a cancer scare to restage the show by collaborating with a creative team on the other side of the world.
"I can't really even put it into words but I feel very deeply that this show takes what I originally did (The Phantom) into another dimension," he says. "It sort of closes a chapter."
We will know if there's a happy ending tonight, when the new $9 million production of Love Never Dies has its Australian premiere in front of an audience containing top producers from North America and Asia.
Whether or not they surrender to its passions, Lloyd Webber believes he is seeing Love Never Dies "as I always hoped it would one day be. I didn't know that would happen here but, honestly, it is an absolutely extraordinary piece of work".
Lloyd Webber sensed the new approach was right even before the overture ended. Gobsmacked by the sight of dome-capped towers and twinkling lights signifying New York's Coney Island fairground, he decided: "You just know that you're in the world where it's supposed to be."
For the past week, Lloyd Webber's world has orbited around the gloriously gothic Regent and a theatre suite overlooking Collins St.
The morning we meet, his lordship looks relaxed in a navy blazer, grey slacks and black slip-on shoes - as if he's wandered in off the deck of a yacht - but producer Tim McFarlane (The Really Useful Group Asia Pacific) advises that Lloyd Webber has been haunting the Regent since he arrived from London: dashing off notes to cast and crew, slogging through tech runs and fine-tuning every aspect of a show he calls "97 per cent there".
"Yes, I've had six days doing what I love doing," he says, "which is actually being a composer working with the director."
Simon Phillips (retiring artistic director of the MTC) is directing this second version of Love Never Dies. It was McFarlane who suggested he meet Lloyd Webber in the UK about restaging the show Down Under and they agreed it would benefit from "going back to the drawing board and reconceiving everything".
That meeting led to another at Lloyd Webber's Mediterranean home, where Phillips's preferred designer, Gabriela Tylesova, unveiled a scenic model with swooping roller-coaster curves.
"I've never seen anything like it before," an astonished Lloyd Webber told her. And standing before the real thing this week, the composer was still dumbfounded by its daring, saying: "Wow, wow."
MILLIONS say the same thing about The Phantom. Lloyd Webber's mega-hit musical has been seen in 149 cities and taken more than $5 billion. But, almost from the moment that famous chandelier rattled in 1986, Lloyd Webber was looking at ways to extend the story of the Phantom, Christine and Raoul.
"I care very much for those characters and the love triangle that exists there," he says.
In 1994, Lloyd Webber discussed the idea of a sequel with novelist Frederick Forsyth. Ten years later, he and comic writer Ben Elton came up with a story that placed the trio on the other side of the Atlantic.
Lloyd Webber was especially attracted to Coney Island - "The only place you could go to where everybody was a freak of some kind" - and imagined a romantic trap being laid there in 1907: 10 years after the Phantom's dramatic disappearance from the Paris Opera House.
"This is a very personal piece for me," he says. "There's probably more of my real self in this than anything else I've ever done."
For his new tale of unrequited love, Lloyd Webber crafted music with a darker, more operatic hue than its classical-pop predecessor and imagined an electrically charged carnival world where his songs could soar.
Shaping a clear storyline proved harder. As he says: "If the book is not fundamentally right, you can be in an awful lot of trouble."
A "perfect storm" of trouble engulfed Love Never Dies as its West End debut approached. Phantom fanatics who objected to a sequel staged what he calls a "professionally run internet campaign against us".
Then Lloyd Webber was diagnosed with cancer. He expected to recover quickly from a prostate operation but explains: "I wasn't back properly and I wasn't on the case as I could normally be with a production that actually wasn't right ... all of us involved with it should have said, 'We've got to put it on hold'."
The theatre critics in London pounced and bloggers cruelly dubbed the show Paint Never Dries. Lloyd Webber says now: "Because I was ill and everything, it probably would have been better if it had been actually produced by someone else."
Second time round, Lloyd Webber has focused on the script and the score and allowed the Australians maximum creative space - a privilege he and lyricist Tim Rice enjoyed in the late 1960s and '70s.
"I sometimes wonder whether Jesus Christ Superstar (1972) would even have been heard of if we'd (first) done it in the theatre," he muses. "Instead, we just made it as an album and said, 'If you want to stage it, you're just going to do what we wrote or not'. Because we were kids and you could say those sorts of things."
Recently reunited on a production of The Wizard of Oz, Rice told Lloyd Webber: "The thing is, Andrew, when we started off, you just did it and didn't listen to anybody. Now, at this stage of our careers, we end up with so many people and don't always come up with the right result."
Love Never Dies mark II could be an exception.
LLOYD Webber's only "real reservation" about Melbourne was the size of the Regent, but those doubts eased after he saw Phillips's "consummate staging".
"Simon seems to know exactly what he wants. I have to say, I'm incredibly impressed," he says.
He is full of praise also for choreographer Graeme Murphy, musical supervisor Guy Simpson, and the cast. Asked about plans to take Love Never Dies overseas, he hesitates, then says: "I would like to see this production go everywhere. It's just the best."
What about New York?
"This is the show that should go to Broadway without any question."
For now, Lloyd Webber is probing every crochet in his score for Love Never Dies. This week, he even penned some new music.
"Only a little touch," he stresses, "but these things are cumulative. I want to do a little bit of work with the orchestra still."
That's my cue to leave but as I go, I ask why we identify so powerfully with the Phantom. "I don't know the answer to it," he sighs. "Maybe it's to do with everybody wanting to change something about themselves."
What would Lord Lloyd Webber change about himself?
"If you know what you want to do in life, you're a very lucky person. If you are then successful and able to make a career out of the one thing you want to do, you're an extraordinarily lucky person. Sometimes, I think I'm the luckiest person alive," he says.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/love-never-dies-is-phantom-take-two/story-e6frf96f-1226064421319
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
U2 Spiderman musical is "a stinker"
By Anthony Lund on 09/02/2011
New York theatre critics have united in their condemnation of the project.
There are some musicals that never make it to Broadway and remain lost forever in some writers’ bottom drawers forever. Jim Steinman’ Batman is one such example of what could have been a great hit. There are others such as the U2-scored Spiderman musical which do make it to the stage, then fall flat on their face.
The musical, which has the subtitle, “Turn Off The Dark” is turning off almost very theatre critic in New York while still in its preview period.
The musical has been in production for a few years, but has suffered a bit of development hell that has continually stalled its release. It may as well have remained there as far as those who have seen the musical unanimously agree.
In its first reviews, the musical has been called a “Stinker”, “the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway and may rank among the worst”, and last but not least, “broken in every respect beyond repair.” All in all not the most appealing of introductions, and surely not what Bono and Co were hoping for.
Then again, will this be one of those cases where the bad reviews have people flocking to see just how terrible it is for themselves.
http://www.musicrooms.net/rock/26201-u2-spiderman-musical-is-a-stinker.html
New York theatre critics have united in their condemnation of the project.
There are some musicals that never make it to Broadway and remain lost forever in some writers’ bottom drawers forever. Jim Steinman’ Batman is one such example of what could have been a great hit. There are others such as the U2-scored Spiderman musical which do make it to the stage, then fall flat on their face.
The musical, which has the subtitle, “Turn Off The Dark” is turning off almost very theatre critic in New York while still in its preview period.
The musical has been in production for a few years, but has suffered a bit of development hell that has continually stalled its release. It may as well have remained there as far as those who have seen the musical unanimously agree.
In its first reviews, the musical has been called a “Stinker”, “the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway and may rank among the worst”, and last but not least, “broken in every respect beyond repair.” All in all not the most appealing of introductions, and surely not what Bono and Co were hoping for.
Then again, will this be one of those cases where the bad reviews have people flocking to see just how terrible it is for themselves.
http://www.musicrooms.net/rock/26201-u2-spiderman-musical-is-a-stinker.html
'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' producer blasts critics -- EXCLUSIVE
Feb 8 2011 02:47 PM ET
by Adam Markovitz
In the wake of the critical drubbing endured today by the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, producer Michael Cohl is speaking up in defense of his show — and in contempt of the critics who he says aren’t giving it a fair shot. “Any of the people who review the show and say it has no redeeming value are just not legitimate reviewers, period,” says Cohl, who claims the show’s detractors (The New York Times and The Washington Post both called Spider-Man one of the worst productions in Broadway history) are out of touch. “It’s hard to have people that don’t get pop culture reviewing a pop culture event, isn’t it?” (Cohl isn’t the only Spider-Man insider bashing the critics — the show’s spokesman, Rick Miramontez, released an exclusive statement to EW earlier today about the reviews: “The PILE-ON by the critics was ridiculous and uncalled for. Their actions are unprecedented and UNCOOL.”)
The costliest show ever mounted on Broadway, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has rarely been out of the headlines in recent months, thanks to the recurring safety issues that contributed to a series of postponed opening dates. Cohl insists that the show will still be a work in progress until it officially opens on March 15. But when asked whether critics would be invited to the show’s official opening night, Cohl declined to give a yes or no response, saying only, “We didn’t invite them this week. They clearly don’t need an invite, do they?” Still, he says the reviews haven’t sunk his spirits yet. “I woke up this morning more determined and more positive than ever. I said, ‘Here we go.’”
http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/02/08/spider-man-producer-critics/
by Adam Markovitz
In the wake of the critical drubbing endured today by the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, producer Michael Cohl is speaking up in defense of his show — and in contempt of the critics who he says aren’t giving it a fair shot. “Any of the people who review the show and say it has no redeeming value are just not legitimate reviewers, period,” says Cohl, who claims the show’s detractors (The New York Times and The Washington Post both called Spider-Man one of the worst productions in Broadway history) are out of touch. “It’s hard to have people that don’t get pop culture reviewing a pop culture event, isn’t it?” (Cohl isn’t the only Spider-Man insider bashing the critics — the show’s spokesman, Rick Miramontez, released an exclusive statement to EW earlier today about the reviews: “The PILE-ON by the critics was ridiculous and uncalled for. Their actions are unprecedented and UNCOOL.”)
The costliest show ever mounted on Broadway, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has rarely been out of the headlines in recent months, thanks to the recurring safety issues that contributed to a series of postponed opening dates. Cohl insists that the show will still be a work in progress until it officially opens on March 15. But when asked whether critics would be invited to the show’s official opening night, Cohl declined to give a yes or no response, saying only, “We didn’t invite them this week. They clearly don’t need an invite, do they?” Still, he says the reviews haven’t sunk his spirits yet. “I woke up this morning more determined and more positive than ever. I said, ‘Here we go.’”
http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/02/08/spider-man-producer-critics/
U2 Spiderman musical is "a stinker"
By Anthony Lund on 09/02/2011
New York theatre critics have united in their condemnation of the project.
There are some musicals that never make it to Broadway and remain lost forever in some writers’ bottom drawers forever. Jim Steinman’ Batman is one such example of what could have been a great hit. There are others such as the U2-scored Spiderman musical which do make it to the stage, then fall flat on their face.
The musical, which has the subtitle, “Turn Off The Dark” is turning off almost very theatre critic in New York while still in its preview period.
The musical has been in production for a few years, but has suffered a bit of development hell that has continually stalled its release. It may as well have remained there as far as those who have seen the musical unanimously agree.
In its first reviews, the musical has been called a “Stinker”, “the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway and may rank among the worst”, and last but not least, “broken in every respect beyond repair.” All in all not the most appealing of introductions, and surely not what Bono and Co were hoping for.
Then again, will this be one of those cases where the bad reviews have people flocking to see just how terrible it is for themselves.
http://www.musicrooms.net/rock/26201-u2-spiderman-musical-is-a-stinker.html
New York theatre critics have united in their condemnation of the project.
There are some musicals that never make it to Broadway and remain lost forever in some writers’ bottom drawers forever. Jim Steinman’ Batman is one such example of what could have been a great hit. There are others such as the U2-scored Spiderman musical which do make it to the stage, then fall flat on their face.
The musical, which has the subtitle, “Turn Off The Dark” is turning off almost very theatre critic in New York while still in its preview period.
The musical has been in production for a few years, but has suffered a bit of development hell that has continually stalled its release. It may as well have remained there as far as those who have seen the musical unanimously agree.
In its first reviews, the musical has been called a “Stinker”, “the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway and may rank among the worst”, and last but not least, “broken in every respect beyond repair.” All in all not the most appealing of introductions, and surely not what Bono and Co were hoping for.
Then again, will this be one of those cases where the bad reviews have people flocking to see just how terrible it is for themselves.
http://www.musicrooms.net/rock/26201-u2-spiderman-musical-is-a-stinker.html
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Good vs. Evil, Hanging by a Thread
Theater Review | 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'
Good vs. Evil, Hanging by a Thread
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: February 7, 2011
Finally, near the end of the first act of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the audience at the Foxwoods Theater on Saturday night got what it had truly been waiting for, whether it knew it or not.
Calamity struck, and it was a real-life (albeit small) calamity — not some tedious, confusing tripe involving a pretty girl dangling from a skyscraper and supervillains laying siege to Manhattan. And not the more general and seriously depressing disaster that was the sum of the mismatched parts that had been assembled onstage.
No, an honest-to-gosh, showstopping glitch occurred, just as the title character of this new musical was about to vanquish or be vanquished by the evil Green Goblin. Never fully explained “mechanical difficulties” were announced by an amplified voice (not immediately distinguishable from the other amplified voices we had been hearing for what felt like forever), as the actors in the scene deflated before our eyes. And for the first time that night something like genuine pleasure spread through the house.
That glee soon took the form of spontaneous, nigh-ecstatic applause, a sound unheard in the previous hour. After vamping on a green fake piano (don’t ask), Patrick Page (who plays the Goblin with a gusto unshared by any other member of the cast) ad-libbed a warning to Reeve Carney (who stars as Spider-Man), who had been awkwardly marking time by pretending to drink Champagne.
“You gotta be careful,” Mr. Page said. “You’re gonna fly over the heads of the audience, you know. I hear they dropped a few of them.”
“Roar,” went the audience, like a herd of starved, listless lions, roused into animation by the arrival of feeding time. Everyone, it seemed, understood Mr. Page’s reference to the injuries that have been incurred by cast and crew members during the long (and officially still far from over) preview period for this $65 million musical. Permission to laugh had been granted, and a bond had temporarily been forged between a previously baffled audience and the beleaguered souls onstage.
All subsequent performances of “Spider-Man” should include at least one such moment. Actively letting theatergoers in on the national joke that this problem-plagued show has become helps make them believe that they have a reason to be there.
This production should play up regularly and resonantly the promise that things could go wrong. Because only when things go wrong in this production does it feel remotely right — if, by right, one means entertaining. So keep the fear factor an active part of the show, guys, and stock the Foxwoods gift shops with souvenir crash helmets and T-shirts that say “I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and lived.” Otherwise, a more appropriate slogan would be “I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and slept.”
I’m not kidding. The sheer ineptitude of this show, inspired by the Spider-Man comic books, loses its shock value early. After 15 or 20 minutes, the central question you keep asking yourself is likely to change from “How can $65 million look so cheap?” to “How long before I’m out of here?”
Directed by Julie Taymor, who wrote the show’s book with Glen Berger, and featuring songs by U2’s Bono and the Edge, “Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst.
I would like to acknowledge here that “Spider-Man” doesn’t officially open until March 15; at least that’s the last date I heard. But since this show was looking as if it might settle into being an unending work in progress — with Ms. Taymor playing Michelangelo to her notion of a Sistine Chapel on Broadway — my editors and I decided I might as well check out “Spider-Man” around Monday, the night it was supposed to have opened before its latest postponement.
You are of course entitled to disagree with our decision. But from what I saw on Saturday night, “Spider-Man” is so grievously broken in every respect that it is beyond repair. Fans of Ms. Taymor’s work on the long-running musical “The Lion King,” adapted from the animated Walt Disney feature, will have to squint charitably to see evidence of her talent.
True, signature Taymor touches like airborne puppets, elaborate masks and perspective-skewing sets (George Tsypin is the scenic designer) are all on hand. But they never connect into a comprehensible story with any momentum. Often you feel as if you were watching the installation of Christmas windows at a fancy department store. At other times the impression is of being on a soundstage where a music video is being filmed in the early 1980s. (Daniel Ezralow’s choreography is pure vintage MTV.)
Nothing looks truly new, including the much-vaunted flying sequences in which some poor sap is strapped into an all-too-visible harness and hoisted uneasily above the audience. (Aren’t they doing just that across the street in “Mary Poppins”?) This is especially unfortunate, since Ms. Taymor and her collaborators have spoken frequently about blazing new frontiers with “Spider-Man,” of venturing where no theater artist (pardon me, I mean artiste) has dared to venture before.
I’m assuming that frontier is supposed to exist somewhere between the second and third dimensions. “Part of the balance we’ve been trying to strike is how ‘comic book’ to go and how ‘human’ to go,” Ms. Taymor has said about her version of the adventures of a nerdy teenager who acquires superhuman powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider.
Anyway, there are lots of flat, cardboardish sets, which could easily be recycled for high school productions of “Grease” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and giant multipanel video projections (by Kyle Cooper). That takes care of the two-dimensional part. The human aspect has been assigned to the flesh-and-blood cast members, and it is a Sisyphean duty.
Some wear grotesque masks that bring to mind hucksters on sidewalks handing out promotional material for fantasy-theme restaurants. (Eiko Ishioka is the costume designer.) Those whose own features are visible include — in addition to Mr. Carney (looking bewildered and beautiful as Spider-Man and his conflicted alter ego, Peter Parker) — a strained Jennifer Damiano as Mary Jane Watson, Peter’s spunky kind-of girlfriend, and T. V. Carpio as Arachne, a web-weaving spider-woman of Greco-Roman myth who haunts Peter’s dreams before breaking into his reality. (I get the impression that Arachne, as the ultimate all-controlling artist, is the only character who much interests Ms. Taymor, but that doesn’t mean that she makes sense.)
There is also the Geek Chorus (Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Mat Devine, Alice Lee), a quartet of adolescent comic-book devotees, who would appear to be either creating or commenting on the plot, but in any case serve only to obscure it even further. They discuss the heady philosophical implications of Spider-Man’s identity while making jokes in which the notion of free will is confused with the plot of the movie “Free Willy.”
For a story that has also inspired hit action movies, it is remarkably static in this telling. (A lot of the plot-propelling fights are merely reported to us.) There are a couple of picturesque set pieces involving Arachne and her chorus of spider-women and one stunner of a cityscape that suggests the streets of Manhattan as seen from the top of the Chrysler Building.
The songs by Bono and the Edge are rarely allowed to take full, attention-capturing form. Mostly they blur into a sustained electronic twang of varying volume, increasing and decreasing in intensity, like a persistent headache. A loud ballad of existential angst has been written for Peter, who rasps dejectedly, “I’d be myself if I knew who I’d become.” That might well be the official theme song of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
SPIDER-MAN
Turn Off the Dark
Music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge; book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger; directed by Ms. Taymor; choreography and aerial choreography by Daniel Ezralow; sets by George Tsypin; lighting by Donald Holder; costumes by Eiko Ishioka; sound by Jonathan Deans; projections by Kyle Cooper; masks by Ms. Taymor; hair design by Campbell Young Associates/Luc Verschueren; makeup design by Judy Chin; aerial design by Scott Rogers; aerial rigging design by Jaque Paquin; projection coordinator/additional content design by Howard Werner; arrangements and orchestrations by David Campbell; music supervisor, Teese Gohl; music direction by Kimberly Grigsby; music coordinator, Antoine Silverman; vocal arrangements by Mr. Campbell, Mr. Gohl and Ms. Grigsby; additional arrangements/vocal arrangements by Dawn Kenny and Rori Coleman; associate producer, Anne Tanaka; executive producers, Glenn Orsher, Martin McCallum and Adam Silberman. Presented by Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, Land Line Productions, Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle/Tony Adams, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Norton Herrick and Herrick Entertainment, Billy Rovzar and 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 and Paul McGuinness, by arrangement with Marvel Entertainment. At the Foxwoods Theater, 213 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; (877) 250-2929; ticketmaster.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.
WITH: Reeve Carney (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Jennifer Damiano (Mary Jane Watson), T. V. Carpio (Arachne), Patrick Page (Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin), Michael Mulheren (J. Jonah Jameson), Ken Marks (Uncle Ben), Isabel Keating (Classics Teacher/Aunt May), Jeb Brown (M J’s Father), Mat Devine (Grim Hunter), Gideon Glick (Jimmy-6), Alice Lee (Miss Arrow), Jonathan Schwartz (Professor Cobwell), Laura Beth Wells (Emily Osborn), Matt Caplan (Flash), Dwayne Clark (Boyle/Busker) and Luther Creek (Kong).
A version of this review appeared in print on February 8, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/theater/reviews/spiderman-review.html
Good vs. Evil, Hanging by a Thread
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: February 7, 2011
Finally, near the end of the first act of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the audience at the Foxwoods Theater on Saturday night got what it had truly been waiting for, whether it knew it or not.
Calamity struck, and it was a real-life (albeit small) calamity — not some tedious, confusing tripe involving a pretty girl dangling from a skyscraper and supervillains laying siege to Manhattan. And not the more general and seriously depressing disaster that was the sum of the mismatched parts that had been assembled onstage.
No, an honest-to-gosh, showstopping glitch occurred, just as the title character of this new musical was about to vanquish or be vanquished by the evil Green Goblin. Never fully explained “mechanical difficulties” were announced by an amplified voice (not immediately distinguishable from the other amplified voices we had been hearing for what felt like forever), as the actors in the scene deflated before our eyes. And for the first time that night something like genuine pleasure spread through the house.
That glee soon took the form of spontaneous, nigh-ecstatic applause, a sound unheard in the previous hour. After vamping on a green fake piano (don’t ask), Patrick Page (who plays the Goblin with a gusto unshared by any other member of the cast) ad-libbed a warning to Reeve Carney (who stars as Spider-Man), who had been awkwardly marking time by pretending to drink Champagne.
“You gotta be careful,” Mr. Page said. “You’re gonna fly over the heads of the audience, you know. I hear they dropped a few of them.”
“Roar,” went the audience, like a herd of starved, listless lions, roused into animation by the arrival of feeding time. Everyone, it seemed, understood Mr. Page’s reference to the injuries that have been incurred by cast and crew members during the long (and officially still far from over) preview period for this $65 million musical. Permission to laugh had been granted, and a bond had temporarily been forged between a previously baffled audience and the beleaguered souls onstage.
All subsequent performances of “Spider-Man” should include at least one such moment. Actively letting theatergoers in on the national joke that this problem-plagued show has become helps make them believe that they have a reason to be there.
This production should play up regularly and resonantly the promise that things could go wrong. Because only when things go wrong in this production does it feel remotely right — if, by right, one means entertaining. So keep the fear factor an active part of the show, guys, and stock the Foxwoods gift shops with souvenir crash helmets and T-shirts that say “I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and lived.” Otherwise, a more appropriate slogan would be “I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and slept.”
I’m not kidding. The sheer ineptitude of this show, inspired by the Spider-Man comic books, loses its shock value early. After 15 or 20 minutes, the central question you keep asking yourself is likely to change from “How can $65 million look so cheap?” to “How long before I’m out of here?”
Directed by Julie Taymor, who wrote the show’s book with Glen Berger, and featuring songs by U2’s Bono and the Edge, “Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst.
I would like to acknowledge here that “Spider-Man” doesn’t officially open until March 15; at least that’s the last date I heard. But since this show was looking as if it might settle into being an unending work in progress — with Ms. Taymor playing Michelangelo to her notion of a Sistine Chapel on Broadway — my editors and I decided I might as well check out “Spider-Man” around Monday, the night it was supposed to have opened before its latest postponement.
You are of course entitled to disagree with our decision. But from what I saw on Saturday night, “Spider-Man” is so grievously broken in every respect that it is beyond repair. Fans of Ms. Taymor’s work on the long-running musical “The Lion King,” adapted from the animated Walt Disney feature, will have to squint charitably to see evidence of her talent.
True, signature Taymor touches like airborne puppets, elaborate masks and perspective-skewing sets (George Tsypin is the scenic designer) are all on hand. But they never connect into a comprehensible story with any momentum. Often you feel as if you were watching the installation of Christmas windows at a fancy department store. At other times the impression is of being on a soundstage where a music video is being filmed in the early 1980s. (Daniel Ezralow’s choreography is pure vintage MTV.)
Nothing looks truly new, including the much-vaunted flying sequences in which some poor sap is strapped into an all-too-visible harness and hoisted uneasily above the audience. (Aren’t they doing just that across the street in “Mary Poppins”?) This is especially unfortunate, since Ms. Taymor and her collaborators have spoken frequently about blazing new frontiers with “Spider-Man,” of venturing where no theater artist (pardon me, I mean artiste) has dared to venture before.
I’m assuming that frontier is supposed to exist somewhere between the second and third dimensions. “Part of the balance we’ve been trying to strike is how ‘comic book’ to go and how ‘human’ to go,” Ms. Taymor has said about her version of the adventures of a nerdy teenager who acquires superhuman powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider.
Anyway, there are lots of flat, cardboardish sets, which could easily be recycled for high school productions of “Grease” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and giant multipanel video projections (by Kyle Cooper). That takes care of the two-dimensional part. The human aspect has been assigned to the flesh-and-blood cast members, and it is a Sisyphean duty.
Some wear grotesque masks that bring to mind hucksters on sidewalks handing out promotional material for fantasy-theme restaurants. (Eiko Ishioka is the costume designer.) Those whose own features are visible include — in addition to Mr. Carney (looking bewildered and beautiful as Spider-Man and his conflicted alter ego, Peter Parker) — a strained Jennifer Damiano as Mary Jane Watson, Peter’s spunky kind-of girlfriend, and T. V. Carpio as Arachne, a web-weaving spider-woman of Greco-Roman myth who haunts Peter’s dreams before breaking into his reality. (I get the impression that Arachne, as the ultimate all-controlling artist, is the only character who much interests Ms. Taymor, but that doesn’t mean that she makes sense.)
There is also the Geek Chorus (Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Mat Devine, Alice Lee), a quartet of adolescent comic-book devotees, who would appear to be either creating or commenting on the plot, but in any case serve only to obscure it even further. They discuss the heady philosophical implications of Spider-Man’s identity while making jokes in which the notion of free will is confused with the plot of the movie “Free Willy.”
For a story that has also inspired hit action movies, it is remarkably static in this telling. (A lot of the plot-propelling fights are merely reported to us.) There are a couple of picturesque set pieces involving Arachne and her chorus of spider-women and one stunner of a cityscape that suggests the streets of Manhattan as seen from the top of the Chrysler Building.
The songs by Bono and the Edge are rarely allowed to take full, attention-capturing form. Mostly they blur into a sustained electronic twang of varying volume, increasing and decreasing in intensity, like a persistent headache. A loud ballad of existential angst has been written for Peter, who rasps dejectedly, “I’d be myself if I knew who I’d become.” That might well be the official theme song of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
SPIDER-MAN
Turn Off the Dark
Music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge; book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger; directed by Ms. Taymor; choreography and aerial choreography by Daniel Ezralow; sets by George Tsypin; lighting by Donald Holder; costumes by Eiko Ishioka; sound by Jonathan Deans; projections by Kyle Cooper; masks by Ms. Taymor; hair design by Campbell Young Associates/Luc Verschueren; makeup design by Judy Chin; aerial design by Scott Rogers; aerial rigging design by Jaque Paquin; projection coordinator/additional content design by Howard Werner; arrangements and orchestrations by David Campbell; music supervisor, Teese Gohl; music direction by Kimberly Grigsby; music coordinator, Antoine Silverman; vocal arrangements by Mr. Campbell, Mr. Gohl and Ms. Grigsby; additional arrangements/vocal arrangements by Dawn Kenny and Rori Coleman; associate producer, Anne Tanaka; executive producers, Glenn Orsher, Martin McCallum and Adam Silberman. Presented by Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, Land Line Productions, Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle/Tony Adams, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Norton Herrick and Herrick Entertainment, Billy Rovzar and 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 and Paul McGuinness, by arrangement with Marvel Entertainment. At the Foxwoods Theater, 213 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; (877) 250-2929; ticketmaster.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.
WITH: Reeve Carney (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Jennifer Damiano (Mary Jane Watson), T. V. Carpio (Arachne), Patrick Page (Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin), Michael Mulheren (J. Jonah Jameson), Ken Marks (Uncle Ben), Isabel Keating (Classics Teacher/Aunt May), Jeb Brown (M J’s Father), Mat Devine (Grim Hunter), Gideon Glick (Jimmy-6), Alice Lee (Miss Arrow), Jonathan Schwartz (Professor Cobwell), Laura Beth Wells (Emily Osborn), Matt Caplan (Flash), Dwayne Clark (Boyle/Busker) and Luther Creek (Kong).
A version of this review appeared in print on February 8, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/theater/reviews/spiderman-review.html
'Spider-Man' deftly spins substance, spectacle
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark won't open until March 15, but by now you've probably heard a few rumblings.
The $65 million collaboration between U2's Bono and The Edge and celebrated director Julie Taymor has seen its opening pushed back several times. Injuries also have made news, not to mention comic monologues.
What has been less widely reported is this: Beyond the offstage drama and lavish budget, and all the feats and flash accompanying them, lies an endearingly old-fashioned musical.
Spider-Man's primary goal — based on a preview this critic saw last week — is to tell a thrilling, moving story through song, dialogue and, yes, a little razzle-dazzle. OK, a lot of razzle-dazzle — and not much of it old-fashioned.
At the preview, a crewmember warned the audience in advance that the production could be halted at any time for technical reasons. The show was stopped once, briefly, then proceeded without a hitch.
More @ http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2011-02-08-spiderman08_st_N.htm
NEW YORK — Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark won't open until March 15, but by now you've probably heard a few rumblings.
The $65 million collaboration between U2's Bono and The Edge and celebrated director Julie Taymor has seen its opening pushed back several times. Injuries also have made news, not to mention comic monologues.
What has been less widely reported is this: Beyond the offstage drama and lavish budget, and all the feats and flash accompanying them, lies an endearingly old-fashioned musical.
Spider-Man's primary goal — based on a preview this critic saw last week — is to tell a thrilling, moving story through song, dialogue and, yes, a little razzle-dazzle. OK, a lot of razzle-dazzle — and not much of it old-fashioned.
At the preview, a crewmember warned the audience in advance that the production could be halted at any time for technical reasons. The show was stopped once, briefly, then proceeded without a hitch.
More @ http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2011-02-08-spiderman08_st_N.htm
Stage Dive: Scott Brown Sees Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark
Some of my colleagues have wondered aloud whether Spider-man will ever be finished — whether it is, in fact, finishable. I think they're onto something: I saw the show on Saturday night, and found it predictably unfinished, but unpredictably entertaining, perhaps on account of this very quality of Death Star–under–construction inchoateness. Conceptually speaking, it's closer to a theme-park stunt spectacular than "circus art," closer to a comic than a musical, closer to The Cremaster Cycle than a rock concert. But “closer” implies proximity to some fixed point, and Spider-man is faaaar out, man. It's by turns hyperstimulated, vivid, lurid, overeducated, underbaked, terrifying, confusing, distracted, ridiculously slick, shockingly clumsy, unmistakably monomaniacal and clinically bipolar.
But never, ever boring. The 2-D comic art doesn't really go with Taymor's foamy, tactile puppetry, just as U2's textural atmo-rock score doesn't really go with the episodic Act One storytelling. Yet even in the depths of Spider-man's certifiably insane second act, I was riveted. Riveted, yes, by what was visible onstage: the inverted Fritz Lang cityscapes, the rag doll fly-assisted choreography, the acid-Skittle color scheme and Ditko-era comic-art backdrops. But often I was equally transfixed by the palpable offstage imagination willing it all into existence. See, Spider-man isn't really about Spider-man. It’s about an artist locked in a death grapple with her subject, a tumultuous relationship between a talented, tormented older woman and a callow young stud. Strip out the $70 million in robotic guywires, Vari-lites, and latex mummery, and you’re basically looking at a Tennessee Williams play.
First, some background for the six people out there who remain (miraculously) unpolluted by Spidey-leaks. (Skip this paragraph if you have been in the loop.) Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark is a much-delayed project announced years ago; producers have come and gone like fall foliage. Taymor, a revered visual artist and anointed director of The Lion King, is at the helm, and co-wrote the book. A proud control freak, she saw in the Spider-man character a peculiarly American expression of ancient myth, and sought to put him in dialogue with the storytelling traditions that bore him. Meanwhile, Marvel Comics and the show’s producers sought to put Spidey in dialogue with tens of millions in front money, on the perfectly reasonable expectation that they’d see a healthy return. (This was back when the movie franchise was alive and kicking.) Since then, the show’s suffered several delays of its opening, the slings and arrows of a skeptical (and shut-out) press, and at least four high-profile accidents, some of them extremely serious.
The plot of the show leaked early, but still defies understanding. Sure, the first act is simple enough. It’s Spider-man’s familiar origin story, his transformation from mild-mannered dweeb Peter Parker into the famous Web Slinger. That arc is scripture for mass audiences, thanks to the first movie, and it’s charmingly carried out here by the L.A. rocker Reeve Carney in the lead role. The storytelling is assisted by a “Geek Chorus” of four nerds — one female (Alice Lee) and demonstrably sharper than the rest. (She goes by “Miss Arrow,” the name of Peter Parker’s feminine nemesis and “opposite number” from the comics.) They dream up a new story of Spider-man, complete with lots of swinging around — and here, Taymor delivers. Once the characters start flying (about 30 minutes in), they don't stop. The entire theater becomes a human aviary, and at least four sequences are devoted exclusively to showing off the aerial rig.
Then comes the second act, which cliff-dives headlong into the realm of dream and myth, allowing Taymor to interrogate the Spider-man character (and, one senses, her own artistic rationale for taking a corporate job). But her primary interest in Peter Parker is announced early on, in Act One: Where did he get the suit? (He obviously didn't make it. It's too beautiful to have been created by a heterosexual teenage boy.)
As a Spidey-story, Taymor’s show is a solid B-minus. (Some of the story basics get garbled and whiplashed, and basic foreknowledge of Spidey 101 is strongly recommended, especially for patrons over the age of 9.) As a pop-art installation treating the subject of pop art, however, the thing is off the scale. What you're watching is the stem cells of a protean imagination dividing and dividing and dividing, right out of control. Taymor's mind discards what she's made as fast as she makes it, always on the move, in search of its next impulse. A series of frames have been erected, one inside the other — the chorus, the superhero "origin story" — in an attempt to contain this monadic, nomadic Creator-force. But it's no use. The result is savage and deeply confusing — a boiling cancer-scape of living pain — that is nevertheless thrilling.
Did I mention there's a number where leggy lady-spiders try on shoes?
Focus!
For those of you who insist on paying a century note for unfinished goods, I'll try to respond to the burning-est of your burning questions, point by point.
1. Why does Glenn Beck like this show so much? The short answer is: Because it is a kid's show. (Which contains not one but two chalkboard scenes!) The longer answer: It's a kid's show with somebody's cockeyed gender-studies thesis stapled to its back. The even-longer answer: Beck and Spider-man both exist in a state of perpetual adolescence; both are serious little Trapper Keeper scribblers, stream-of-consciousness free-associaters totally enamored of their own bad poetry. The key distinction: Taymor's bad poetry is still pretty ravishing. (Though both kinda make you want to stock up on canned food and gold.)
2. Do people fall and die? Not on my night. But it wasn't exactly smooth sailing, either. There was a technical glitch at the end of Act One, which apparently recurs on several nights: It has something to do with a climactic aerial battle between Spider-man and the Green Goblin (Broadway superhero Patrick Page) on top of the Chrysler Building. (The Chrysler pistons in and out of this show so relentlessly, it must violate blue laws.) These were the only delays and stoppages I witnessed, but they were enough to mangle an already contorted late-act storyboard into total nonsense.
Not to worry, though: Tech screw-ups are apparently just a cue for Page to start vamping. He's a master, and one gets the feeling he's had plenty of practice. He was in the middle of an evil cackle when the stage manager called for a caesura. "That just takes the villainy right out of ya!" he cracked, to enormous laughs. Then he plopped himself down in full foam-villain drag at a prop piano and "played" a reprise of "(I'll Take) Manhattan," which Gobby taunts Spidey with, atop the Chrysler. (Yes, it's true: The show's most delightful musical moment comes not via Bono and Edge, but Rodgers and Hart.) Carney, his Spidey mask doffed, joined him, sipping a prop champagne flute. "Careful there," said Page, still half in character, "you gotta fly out over the audience in a minute." This broke up Spidey, and the audience, too. Page surfed it, swiveled into an aside: "You know, I hear they dropped a couple of 'em." Huge, ghoulish laughs. For a moment, we get a glimpse of the show's potential as English "pantomime" — the sprawling, winking family entertainments they enjoy across the pond. Irony-wise, could it be Julie Taymor's done by accident what Dance of the Vampires tried so hard to do on purpose?
At this point, I honestly hope they never fix the (non-injurious) glitches: They puncture the show's pretense and furnish meta-theatrical opportunities that can't be staged. We've had Epic Theater, we've had Poor Theater — is this the dawn of Broken Theater?
Corollary: Is it ghoulish that I'm half-expecting someone to fall? You bet! But don't worry about it: Your gleeful morbidity is part of a larger cultural disease, of which Spidenfreude is only the outermost protrusion. And isn't that half the fun of "circus art," anyway? The phrases "death-defying!" and "without a net!" weren't invented by Julie Taymor and Bono. Look, we're sick fucks. We've always been sick fucks. The only difference is, nowadays we pay more for it than we did in the 1890s.
3. Is this really Spidey? Or something else Julie Taymor made up in her Krang-like crazybrain and labeled "Spider-man"? No, it's Spidey. Or rather, it's just as Spidey as Alan Moore's Swamp Thing was Swamp Thing. Taymor's doing what any big-name writer does when she takes over a comic-book title: She's grafting her own obsessions onto it. Comics, despite all their surface pieties and supposed obsession with "continuity," are an incredibly plastic form, a substrate for almost any sort of storytelling. Taymor's taken full advantage of that, and announces her intention to meddle in the mythology by hauling out her "Geek Chorus." The fanboys, who are engaged in some vague act of comics creation, announce their intention to create the most "disgustingly extreme" version of the Spider-man story. They're challenged by Miss Arrow, speaking for Taymor, who argues with the received Spider-wisdom and posits a higher authority, Arachne (Across the Universe's T.V. Carpio, perhaps a little too itty-bitty in voice-and-presence for a goddess role). Arachne, any student of the classics will remember, was the first spider — a human woman transformed by Athena after she won a weaving contest against the goddess. Turns out she's the root cause of Spider-man, the Gaean original predating the male demiurge. In the form of that genetically modified superspider — for she is all spiders — Arachne gave Spider-man his powers. The not-so-subtle implication is that Taymor herself has now entered the stage: Artist and art have merged. ("I'm the only real artist working today," Arachne cracks.) At this point, we learn that Arachne's not just a weaver of cloth, but a weaver of dreams, and Taymor begins a light pillage of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" mythos. (You can't accuse her of not knowing her comics.) This also gives her free rein to break her own (already scanty) rules: Dream and reality warp and woof into a tapestry of total confusion, and the second act descends into mostly watchable chaos. There's a supervillain fashion show, an unforgivably punny plot point involving "the world wide web" (it's a web, get it?), and lots of swipes at the nasty old news media, with all its negativity and print-the-rumor churlishness. (Guilty as charged!)
Oh, it's all nonsense, of course. It doesn't make a lick of sense, even with the fervent annotations of the Chorus helping us through. The show's metabolism speeds up in the second act, even as its central nervous system breaks down, and eventually, even Taymor seems to be feeling a little winded. She starts relying heavily on massive video-screens, featuring naive CGI versions of a villainous pantheon that includes Carnage, Swarm, and Lizard. The second act, taken all in all, is basically how I've always imagined the Björk–Matthew Barney honeymoon: lots of atavistic rock-moaning, lots of 40-story phallic symbols, lots of bees.
4. Is the music any good? As far as I could tell, there are only two U2 songs in this show: "Boy Falls From the Sky," Spidey's big motif, and "Rise Above," Arachne's song. The rest of the music is a warm, not unpleasant ear bath of urgent rock pattern-building. Much of it's wonderfully cheesy, as if the Edge stepped out for a smoke and ceded the stage to John Carpenter. (Oh, if only!) I don't expect to see U2 back on Broadway anytime soon, but it's been fun having them over for an extended, if inconsequential jam. Reeve Carney's voice is an excellent instrument for this sort of thing: He's got an extremely gratifying rock tenor, nicely shreddy but never too emo-broken, and closer to Train than U2.
5. What's it like out there in the audience? What audience? Hate to break it to you, Joe Ticketbuyer, but you're just part of the scenery. The orchestra seating exists mainly to give us jeopardy (and a target) for the many flying people hurled overhead. Nervous? Don't worry, you're allowed to drink in the theater: Never before have I sat in a mezzanine so littered with beer cans! (Not to worry, theater snobs: They were Heinekens!)
So that's where things stand with Spider-man, on this February 7. As maximalist camp, it succeeds thunderously. Is that what it intends to be? Irrelevant. To ascribe intent would be to limit the power of this show's occasionally frightening, often confounding, always metastasizing imagination. I recommend Spider-man never open. I think it should be built and rebuilt and overbuilt forever, a living monument to itself.
Follow me at Facebook and on Twitter @scottstagedive.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/02/stage_dive_scott_brown_on_spid.html?imw=Y&f=most-emailed-24h5
But never, ever boring. The 2-D comic art doesn't really go with Taymor's foamy, tactile puppetry, just as U2's textural atmo-rock score doesn't really go with the episodic Act One storytelling. Yet even in the depths of Spider-man's certifiably insane second act, I was riveted. Riveted, yes, by what was visible onstage: the inverted Fritz Lang cityscapes, the rag doll fly-assisted choreography, the acid-Skittle color scheme and Ditko-era comic-art backdrops. But often I was equally transfixed by the palpable offstage imagination willing it all into existence. See, Spider-man isn't really about Spider-man. It’s about an artist locked in a death grapple with her subject, a tumultuous relationship between a talented, tormented older woman and a callow young stud. Strip out the $70 million in robotic guywires, Vari-lites, and latex mummery, and you’re basically looking at a Tennessee Williams play.
First, some background for the six people out there who remain (miraculously) unpolluted by Spidey-leaks. (Skip this paragraph if you have been in the loop.) Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark is a much-delayed project announced years ago; producers have come and gone like fall foliage. Taymor, a revered visual artist and anointed director of The Lion King, is at the helm, and co-wrote the book. A proud control freak, she saw in the Spider-man character a peculiarly American expression of ancient myth, and sought to put him in dialogue with the storytelling traditions that bore him. Meanwhile, Marvel Comics and the show’s producers sought to put Spidey in dialogue with tens of millions in front money, on the perfectly reasonable expectation that they’d see a healthy return. (This was back when the movie franchise was alive and kicking.) Since then, the show’s suffered several delays of its opening, the slings and arrows of a skeptical (and shut-out) press, and at least four high-profile accidents, some of them extremely serious.
The plot of the show leaked early, but still defies understanding. Sure, the first act is simple enough. It’s Spider-man’s familiar origin story, his transformation from mild-mannered dweeb Peter Parker into the famous Web Slinger. That arc is scripture for mass audiences, thanks to the first movie, and it’s charmingly carried out here by the L.A. rocker Reeve Carney in the lead role. The storytelling is assisted by a “Geek Chorus” of four nerds — one female (Alice Lee) and demonstrably sharper than the rest. (She goes by “Miss Arrow,” the name of Peter Parker’s feminine nemesis and “opposite number” from the comics.) They dream up a new story of Spider-man, complete with lots of swinging around — and here, Taymor delivers. Once the characters start flying (about 30 minutes in), they don't stop. The entire theater becomes a human aviary, and at least four sequences are devoted exclusively to showing off the aerial rig.
Then comes the second act, which cliff-dives headlong into the realm of dream and myth, allowing Taymor to interrogate the Spider-man character (and, one senses, her own artistic rationale for taking a corporate job). But her primary interest in Peter Parker is announced early on, in Act One: Where did he get the suit? (He obviously didn't make it. It's too beautiful to have been created by a heterosexual teenage boy.)
As a Spidey-story, Taymor’s show is a solid B-minus. (Some of the story basics get garbled and whiplashed, and basic foreknowledge of Spidey 101 is strongly recommended, especially for patrons over the age of 9.) As a pop-art installation treating the subject of pop art, however, the thing is off the scale. What you're watching is the stem cells of a protean imagination dividing and dividing and dividing, right out of control. Taymor's mind discards what she's made as fast as she makes it, always on the move, in search of its next impulse. A series of frames have been erected, one inside the other — the chorus, the superhero "origin story" — in an attempt to contain this monadic, nomadic Creator-force. But it's no use. The result is savage and deeply confusing — a boiling cancer-scape of living pain — that is nevertheless thrilling.
Did I mention there's a number where leggy lady-spiders try on shoes?
Focus!
For those of you who insist on paying a century note for unfinished goods, I'll try to respond to the burning-est of your burning questions, point by point.
1. Why does Glenn Beck like this show so much? The short answer is: Because it is a kid's show. (Which contains not one but two chalkboard scenes!) The longer answer: It's a kid's show with somebody's cockeyed gender-studies thesis stapled to its back. The even-longer answer: Beck and Spider-man both exist in a state of perpetual adolescence; both are serious little Trapper Keeper scribblers, stream-of-consciousness free-associaters totally enamored of their own bad poetry. The key distinction: Taymor's bad poetry is still pretty ravishing. (Though both kinda make you want to stock up on canned food and gold.)
2. Do people fall and die? Not on my night. But it wasn't exactly smooth sailing, either. There was a technical glitch at the end of Act One, which apparently recurs on several nights: It has something to do with a climactic aerial battle between Spider-man and the Green Goblin (Broadway superhero Patrick Page) on top of the Chrysler Building. (The Chrysler pistons in and out of this show so relentlessly, it must violate blue laws.) These were the only delays and stoppages I witnessed, but they were enough to mangle an already contorted late-act storyboard into total nonsense.
Not to worry, though: Tech screw-ups are apparently just a cue for Page to start vamping. He's a master, and one gets the feeling he's had plenty of practice. He was in the middle of an evil cackle when the stage manager called for a caesura. "That just takes the villainy right out of ya!" he cracked, to enormous laughs. Then he plopped himself down in full foam-villain drag at a prop piano and "played" a reprise of "(I'll Take) Manhattan," which Gobby taunts Spidey with, atop the Chrysler. (Yes, it's true: The show's most delightful musical moment comes not via Bono and Edge, but Rodgers and Hart.) Carney, his Spidey mask doffed, joined him, sipping a prop champagne flute. "Careful there," said Page, still half in character, "you gotta fly out over the audience in a minute." This broke up Spidey, and the audience, too. Page surfed it, swiveled into an aside: "You know, I hear they dropped a couple of 'em." Huge, ghoulish laughs. For a moment, we get a glimpse of the show's potential as English "pantomime" — the sprawling, winking family entertainments they enjoy across the pond. Irony-wise, could it be Julie Taymor's done by accident what Dance of the Vampires tried so hard to do on purpose?
At this point, I honestly hope they never fix the (non-injurious) glitches: They puncture the show's pretense and furnish meta-theatrical opportunities that can't be staged. We've had Epic Theater, we've had Poor Theater — is this the dawn of Broken Theater?
Corollary: Is it ghoulish that I'm half-expecting someone to fall? You bet! But don't worry about it: Your gleeful morbidity is part of a larger cultural disease, of which Spidenfreude is only the outermost protrusion. And isn't that half the fun of "circus art," anyway? The phrases "death-defying!" and "without a net!" weren't invented by Julie Taymor and Bono. Look, we're sick fucks. We've always been sick fucks. The only difference is, nowadays we pay more for it than we did in the 1890s.
3. Is this really Spidey? Or something else Julie Taymor made up in her Krang-like crazybrain and labeled "Spider-man"? No, it's Spidey. Or rather, it's just as Spidey as Alan Moore's Swamp Thing was Swamp Thing. Taymor's doing what any big-name writer does when she takes over a comic-book title: She's grafting her own obsessions onto it. Comics, despite all their surface pieties and supposed obsession with "continuity," are an incredibly plastic form, a substrate for almost any sort of storytelling. Taymor's taken full advantage of that, and announces her intention to meddle in the mythology by hauling out her "Geek Chorus." The fanboys, who are engaged in some vague act of comics creation, announce their intention to create the most "disgustingly extreme" version of the Spider-man story. They're challenged by Miss Arrow, speaking for Taymor, who argues with the received Spider-wisdom and posits a higher authority, Arachne (Across the Universe's T.V. Carpio, perhaps a little too itty-bitty in voice-and-presence for a goddess role). Arachne, any student of the classics will remember, was the first spider — a human woman transformed by Athena after she won a weaving contest against the goddess. Turns out she's the root cause of Spider-man, the Gaean original predating the male demiurge. In the form of that genetically modified superspider — for she is all spiders — Arachne gave Spider-man his powers. The not-so-subtle implication is that Taymor herself has now entered the stage: Artist and art have merged. ("I'm the only real artist working today," Arachne cracks.) At this point, we learn that Arachne's not just a weaver of cloth, but a weaver of dreams, and Taymor begins a light pillage of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" mythos. (You can't accuse her of not knowing her comics.) This also gives her free rein to break her own (already scanty) rules: Dream and reality warp and woof into a tapestry of total confusion, and the second act descends into mostly watchable chaos. There's a supervillain fashion show, an unforgivably punny plot point involving "the world wide web" (it's a web, get it?), and lots of swipes at the nasty old news media, with all its negativity and print-the-rumor churlishness. (Guilty as charged!)
Oh, it's all nonsense, of course. It doesn't make a lick of sense, even with the fervent annotations of the Chorus helping us through. The show's metabolism speeds up in the second act, even as its central nervous system breaks down, and eventually, even Taymor seems to be feeling a little winded. She starts relying heavily on massive video-screens, featuring naive CGI versions of a villainous pantheon that includes Carnage, Swarm, and Lizard. The second act, taken all in all, is basically how I've always imagined the Björk–Matthew Barney honeymoon: lots of atavistic rock-moaning, lots of 40-story phallic symbols, lots of bees.
4. Is the music any good? As far as I could tell, there are only two U2 songs in this show: "Boy Falls From the Sky," Spidey's big motif, and "Rise Above," Arachne's song. The rest of the music is a warm, not unpleasant ear bath of urgent rock pattern-building. Much of it's wonderfully cheesy, as if the Edge stepped out for a smoke and ceded the stage to John Carpenter. (Oh, if only!) I don't expect to see U2 back on Broadway anytime soon, but it's been fun having them over for an extended, if inconsequential jam. Reeve Carney's voice is an excellent instrument for this sort of thing: He's got an extremely gratifying rock tenor, nicely shreddy but never too emo-broken, and closer to Train than U2.
5. What's it like out there in the audience? What audience? Hate to break it to you, Joe Ticketbuyer, but you're just part of the scenery. The orchestra seating exists mainly to give us jeopardy (and a target) for the many flying people hurled overhead. Nervous? Don't worry, you're allowed to drink in the theater: Never before have I sat in a mezzanine so littered with beer cans! (Not to worry, theater snobs: They were Heinekens!)
So that's where things stand with Spider-man, on this February 7. As maximalist camp, it succeeds thunderously. Is that what it intends to be? Irrelevant. To ascribe intent would be to limit the power of this show's occasionally frightening, often confounding, always metastasizing imagination. I recommend Spider-man never open. I think it should be built and rebuilt and overbuilt forever, a living monument to itself.
Follow me at Facebook and on Twitter @scottstagedive.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/02/stage_dive_scott_brown_on_spid.html?imw=Y&f=most-emailed-24h5
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