Ouch! Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark 2.0 reviews NOT coming up roses for Spidey

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.popeater.com/2011/01/13/spider-man-broadway-musical-delayed-for-fifth-time/



'Spider-Man' Broadway Musical
Delayed for Fifth Time
By Rebecca Macatee  
Posted Jan 13th 2011 09:42PM



If your spidey senses were tingling Thursday night, you might head over to the Great White Way and lend a hand on set. The Wall Street Journal  reports that the problem-plagued Broadway musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" has once again pushed back its opening night.

This is the fifth time the show has delayed its first official performance, now scheduled for March 15. The show's received a lot of negative attention, for bad reviews and the multiple sidelining injuries incurred by the actors and crew.

A statement released by the show said they needed time to work on a new ending. Some theatergoers have been confused by what went down after intermission.

"We simply need more time to fully execute the creative team's vision before freezing the show," said lead producer Michael Cohl. He then reassured audiences this would be the "final postponent" of the show, which has been in an usually long preview period of more than 15 weeks.

Despite 'Spider-Man's' rather tumultuous start in theater, the clearly popular show was the number one musical on Broadway. I vote they keep working out those set kinks, brush off the critics and if at all possible, bring James Franco on board. Multi-talented Harry Osborn could undoubtedly weave a web of gold.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Ok, as the new movie  might be out before the musical finally opens, I'll post this here for now.

In re Andrew Garfield, I first thought--what?? After seeing this photo below, I'm thinking--Whoa!!




http://www.popeater.com/2011/01/14/andrew-garfield-as-spider-man/





First Look:
Andrew Garfield as
'Spider-Man'
By The Editors at Moviefone 
Posted Jan 14th 2011 01:30AM





The first official image of Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man has been released, courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Dark, disheveled and skinny probably best describe this first image of Garfield as Spidey. He's without the mask, which leaves us a little more to look forward to, and based on that scar, as well as the expression on his face, the iconic superhero has just been through one of the toughest battles of his young career as the webbed crusader.

He's got a backpack slung over his shoulder, which reminds us that this is the beginning -- this is Peter Parker in high school, dealing with his new powers and learning about being Spider-Man, finding it may not be all it's cracked up to be. He's weak; he doesn't "get it" yet.

As far as the suit goes, it looks updated, but still familiar enough for fans. We like the lack of muscles and the frenetic spider graphic on his chest, as if he has no clue what he is or what he's doing.

This comes as good news for 'Spider-Man' fans as all is not well in the Spidey universe. The Wall Street Journal reports that the problem-plagued Broadway musical 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' has once again pushed back its opening night.

This is the fourth time the show has delayed its first official performance, now scheduled for March 15. The show has received a lot of negative attention, with multiple sidelining injuries incurred by the actors and crew and some lukewarm reviews.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Here's a slightly lighter version of the image:




 

[Front-Ranger]

Here's a slightly lighter version of the image:




 

Whoa indeed! He's come a long way since Imaginarium. He's sleek...he's creepy...he's hot!!

[Jeff Wrangler]

Whoa indeed! He's come a long way since Imaginarium. He's sleek...he's creepy...he's hot!!

He's a cute puppy, all right. 

[delalluvia]

I liked Andrew Garfield in the Imaginarium as well.  Am looking forward to see him take on the mantle.

As for the stage play - don't thespians, especially those in the theater, have superstitions about such bad omens?

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/theater/06spider.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all


‘Spider-Man’ Becomes the Punch Line of Broadway
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: February 5, 2011


Joan Rivers on Wednesday after seeing "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark." The show's official opening has been
delayed five times.


Joan Rivers gave a suggestion to the director Julie Taymor the other night: “Hire a stunt person to fall on someone every three or four weeks — that’ll keep audiences showing up.”

Like talk show hosts, magazine editors, entertainment bloggers, other comics, even an animation studio in Taiwan, Ms. Rivers is getting a lot of mileage out of the new Broadway show “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”

She was there backstage at the Foxwoods Theater on Wednesday, schmoozing with the cast and Ms. Taymor, who is directing the show, to develop more material for her stand-up act, which lately has begun with a moment of silence for “those Americans risking their lives daily — in ‘Spider-Man’ the musical,” a reference to the four performers who have been injured working on the show.

“Spider-Man” has not even officially opened yet. The date has been delayed five times to fix myriad problems, with Sunday afternoon being preview performance No. 66 and the opening planned for Monday night being pushed back five more weeks to March 15. But this $65 million musical has become a national object of pop culture fascination — more so, perhaps, than any show in Broadway history.

Starting with Conan O’Brien’s spoof of Spider-Man warbling in rhyme on Nov. 30, two nights after the musical’s problem-plagued first preview, the show has been lampooned on every major late-night comedy show and by The Onion,  which portrayed the producers as still being optimistic about the show despite a nuclear bomb’s detonating during a preview. Recently, Steve Martin slyly referred to it in a series of tweets about watching the “Spider-Man” movies at home.

“Settling in to watch Spiderman 3 on deluxe edition DVD, but I fell from hanging cables in screening room. 2 hour delay,” he wrote.

Media celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Glenn Beck and the hosts of “Morning Joe” have all raved about the musical, especially Mr. Beck, who said in an interview on Friday that he had seen it four times.

Mr. Beck has framed its appeal on his radio broadcast as a face-off between regular Americans and cultural snobs (i.e., liberals). In the interview, however, he was more fanboy than fire breather, rattling off plot points and design elements with the practiced eye of a Sardi’s regular.

“The story line is right on the money for today, which is to be your better self, that you can spiral into darkness or — ” here he quoted one of the show’s anthemic songs — “you can rise above,” said Mr. Beck, who estimated that he sees a dozen shows a year. “In fact, I just wrote an e-mail to Julie” — Ms. Taymor — “about how much I loved the new ending.”

Last month, “Spider-Man” became the first Broadway show since “The Producers” to land on the cover of The New Yorker;  the cartoon, by Barry Blitt, who also did “The Producers” cover in 2001, showed several injured Spider-Men in a hospital ward.



“Spider-Man” became the first Broadway show on the
cover of The New Yorker since 2001


“For our cover we always ask ourselves, would our one million readers know what we were making reference to?” said Francoise Mouly, art editor of The New Yorker.  “But in no time at all, ‘Spider-Man’ has gotten enough notoriety that we knew the cover would make people laugh. Even the show’s producers laughed; they’ve been hounding us to buy copies of the artwork.”

If most theater artists and producers are intensely protective of their shows, those at “Spider-Man” have a peculiar financial interest in being mocked. The musical, which marries a hugely popular comic book brand with music by Bono and the Edge of U2, is grossing about $1.3 million a week in ticket sales, the most of any Broadway show except the blockbuster “Wicked,” despite relatively little advertising and no major reviews yet.

By all accounts, including from inside “Spider-Man,” the show is a hot seller week to week — rather than building a huge eight-figure advance commensurate with its $65 million cost — which would suggest staying power. And that popularity has been fueled by the echo chamber of jokes, dinner party chatter and media attention among the fashionable and their hangers-on surrounding this technically ambitious show.

For all that, of course, there are some adults and children who simply have an attachment to Spider-Man, who want to see people swing from webs, or who think that the show might make for enjoyable live theater.

“Our sales are strong; they continue to be strong, which is terrific news, but I can’t give you one clear reason why the show becomes such a draw every night after night,” Michael Cohl, the lead producer, said in an interview. “What I know is that people are talking about ‘Spider-Man’ to what seems like an unprecedented degree.”

Philip J. Smith, the chairman of the Shubert Organization, which owns and books 17 of Broadway’s 40 theaters, said he had never seen a show become such a curiosity. “It has become a phenomenon for reasons, it seems, that have very little to do with the show itself,” Mr. Smith said. (“Spider-Man” is not in a Shubert theater.)

The injuries to the four performers generated the bulk of the publicity for the show this winter, including the departure of one of its stars, Natalie Mendoza, who sustained a concussion while backstage and left the production in late December after signing a confidentiality agreement and being paid an undisclosed amount.

But if the axiom that all publicity is good publicity has benefited the musical, what happens to “Spider-Man” when the publicity dies down?

Broadway shows become hits, by and large, because of word-of-mouth praise and excitement among so-called tastemakers, be they critics who championed plays like “Red” and “August: Osage County,” parents who tell their neighbors about the great time that the children had at “The Lion King” or “Wicked,” or wealthy older theatergoers who tell their friends about the sentimental fun of “Jersey Boys” or “Mary Poppins.”

A crucial question for “Spider-Man” is this: If tourists and parents with children head to the musical so they can have bragging rights at dinner parties or on the playground, will that translate into their friends going to see the show — once the laughs have died down — and will they themselves go back a second time or more, as many “Wicked” fans do? Some veteran theater producers say no.

“The $65 million price tag and the circuslike atmosphere of people getting injured or the show having technical problems, all of that is creating interest in the short term,” said Elizabeth I. McCann, who has been producing on Broadway since the mid-1970s and has won multiple Tony Awards, mostly for plays. “But at some point, I think, people are going to say that the emperor has no clothes where the so-called musical spectacle of ‘Spider-Man’ is concerned, and the adult audience will start to lose interest.”

The musical’s producers are trying to head off such a possibility by welcoming another set of tastemakers — celebrities — some of whom are friends of Bono and the Edge. Jon Bon Jovi, David Bowie, Kevin and Nick Jonas, Julian Lennon, Sean Penn and Jerry Seinfeld are among those who have seen the show. Kevin Jonas tweeted afterward: “Just saw spiderman on broadway so awesome! Everyone go see it.” Ms. Taymor and Bono, who are both close to Ms. Winfrey, cooperated with her on a long article in O: The Oprah Magazine.

Ms. Taymor has juggled giving interviews and greeting celebrity visitors like Ms. Rivers while continuing to make changes to the show, but she said that she had largely blocked out the cultural noise surrounding “Spider-Man.”

“I took off my Google alerts on the show a while ago because a lot of the jokes and comments out there are negative, and I thought it’s too hard to work under this kind of vitriol,” she said in an interview.

On Wednesday night, Ms. Taymor looked queasy after Ms. Rivers suggested dropping performers from the rafters for thrills. (Ms. Rivers also suggested selling umbrellalike helmets to make more money.)

“Of course, someone’s told you that before,” Ms. Rivers said.

“No,” Ms. Taymor said, before walking away, “you’re the first.”

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Oh my!  The Times  has decided--'fool me once--' and has gone with the previous deadline, February 7, to review the show--

Oh dear!








Theater Review | 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'
Good vs. Evil, Hanging by a Thread
This show is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst.



SLIDESHOW:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/02/08/theater/20110208-spiderman.html


The Web of ‘Spider-Man’ Interactive feature:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/08/theater/20110208-spiderman.html?ref=reviews







Good vs. Evil,
Hanging by a Thread
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: February 7, 2011


Patrick Page, left, as the Green Goblin, and Reeve Carney as Spider-Man, at Foxwoods
Theater.


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).

[Front-Ranger]

It sounds like something that had a lot of potential on the drawing board. I think Ang Lee got hung up in the comic book web on The Hulk too...

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.

 

[Meryl]

Hoo boy, the truth hurts, eh?