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

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

I want to see the lady-spiders trying on shoes and the supervillain fashion show. 

You better go fast, Jeff--the lady-spiders and their shoes are getting the heave-ho!




http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/theater/changing-julie-taymors-vision-in-spider-man.html?_r=1&ref=theater


‘Spider-Man’: Turn On the Changes
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: March 10, 2011


Many of Julie Taymor’s signature touches in Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” would be cut or altered in the producers’ new creative plan, which includes scaling back the villainess Arachne, dropping the “Deeply Furious” number of shoe-wearing spider-ladies, and reshaping the Geek Chorus of narrators, according to three people who work on the show and were briefed Thursday on plans.

The producers announced Wednesday that Ms. Taymor was stepping aside from the $65 million production because of schedule conflicts, though she will still be billed as its director and a script writer. Taking over to reshape the show will be the theater and circus director Philip William McKinley (Broadway’s “Boy From Oz”) and the playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.

Friends and colleagues of Ms. Taymor have said she was forced out because she would not make extensive changes that the producers wanted.

The producers have now decided that they will shut down the show sometime this spring, but only for a short period, and they want artists with fresh perspectives to oversee the changes.

According to the three people aware of the producers’ plan, who spoke anonymously because it is confidential, the central love story of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson will be enhanced, and Arachne — who now dominates Act II — will have her stage time reduced.

The producers also want to cut “Deeply Furious,” which has been widely denounced by theater critics. The show’s composers, Bono and the Edge of U2, are writing at least two new songs, one of which will be for the start of Act II; the second may replace “Deeply Furious.”

Additional flying sequences are being considered, and the story arc of the villain Green Goblin is also expected to be clarified. What happens to him in Act II is among several confusing plot points.

Lawyers for Ms. Taymor and the production continued negotiations on Thursday about her contract, which gives her broad creative control over the musical. A spokeswoman for Ms. Taymor declined to comment.

Broadway group sales offices were being inundated Thursday with complaints and concerns from organizers who had planned trips to New York to see “Spider-Man” after its previously scheduled March 15 opening. “Buyers want answers now, and most want to protect themselves with other shows and many want refunds,” said Stephanie Lee, president of Group Sales Box Office.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Uh oh.




Members of the current production, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements at the producers’ request, said that the goal of the new creative team was to strip away some of the musical’s darker elements to make it more family-friendly. While audiences now regularly include children accompanied by grown-ups, the new team wants parents to know that the show will be a pleasurable, thrilling experience for young audiences, rather than the more serious, adult-minded fare that Ms. Taymor had in mind.





http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/theater/julie-taymors-vision-for-spider-man-takes-its-final-bows.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1302955700-BKCj9Hguvuw/+ASUfRmbXA



One Show Spins Its Last,
As Another Takes Shape
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: April 15, 2011


Backstage at "Spider-Man" recently, the show's lead actor, Reeve Carney, and Julie Taymor, who was
ousted by the producers last month over creative conflicts.



Julie Taymor with Bono.


History is being made on Broadway this weekend: The $70 million museum piece that is Julie Taymor’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the most expensive musical of all time, is on display in its final performances through Sunday afternoon, then disassembled out of existence.

Gone, when the show resumes performances on May 12 after a three-week overhaul, will be the Geek Chorus of narrators who were stand-ins for the show’s creators: Bono and the Edge of U2, the playwright Glen Berger and Ms. Taymor, whom the producers ousted as director last month over creative conflicts.

Gone will be Ms. Taymor’s vision of the spider villainess Arachne, now a central role inspired by Greek mythology. The part will be reduced to a guardian angel character during the hiatus, according to members of the cast and the production.



The Arachne character, which will have a reduced role in the new
production.


Gone, too, will be some of Ms. Taymor’s head-spinning numbers, like “Deeply Furious,” in which Arachne and her spider ladies-in-waiting become all-powerful by slipping shoes onto their many legs. Gone will be the Act I death of another villain, the Green Goblin, who will become an even bigger character when performances resume, reflecting the wishes of focus groups that “Spider-Man” producers convened this winter. And gone will be the Act II climax, a confrontation between Arachne and Peter Parker.



With Julie Taymor out as director, "Spider-Man:
Turn Off the Dark" will have a bigger role for the
Green Goblin, above, battling with Spider-Man.


For some members of the “Spider-Man” cast and crew, the weeks since Ms. Taymor’s firing on March 9 have been a painful limbo: eight performances a week of a show marked for extinction. Once again, “Spider-Man” is without historical precedent: no other Broadway show has run for months without opening and then shut down temporarily to excise much of the original director’s concept.

“I’m greatly saddened that the world won’t get to see Julie’s vision after the end of this week,” said Gideon Glick, who played one of the geeks, Jimmy-6 (with qualities inspired by Bono), who will leave the production after Sunday. “She aspired to show the world that comic books were part of a larger mythos that’s been around since even before the Greeks. She elevated the story of ‘Spider-Man’ to a cosmic level.”



When the revamped "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" resumes performances on May 12, a major
missing element will be the Geek Chorus of narrators, played here, from left, by Jonathan Schwartz,
Gideon Glick, T. V. Carpio and Mat Devine.


In a statement, Ms. Taymor’s spokesman said: “Julie feels that the early reviews that published before the show was ready to open sadly do not reflect the show that is closing this weekend.  Most critics, in fact, will have never seen this latest version before they see one that greatly changes major threads of the story, choreography and songs.”

As some actors have prepared to depart, others have been rehearsing the new script written by Mr. Berger and his new collaborator, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a playwright and comic-book author. But even some of those who are staying said they were still struggling over the loss of Ms. Taymor. T. V. Carpio, who will remain in the cast as Arachne, described Ms. Taymor in a statement as “at the heart of this project.”

“Julie takes risks and that is what makes her amazing,” Ms. Carpio wrote. Regarding Ms. Taymor’s ideas for “Spider-Man,” she added, “I’m sure you can always find flaws in things, but the fact is she took that risk and she should be commended for it.”

The reconfigured creative team — the theater and circus director Philip William McKinley (Broadway’s “Boy From Oz”), Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa and Mr. Berger — also declined to be interviewed through a spokesman for the production.

More than 245,000 people have seen “Spider-Man” since Nov. 28, when the first of about 140 previews so far took place — the most ever for a Broadway show. Its lead producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, kept delaying opening night in hopes that Ms. Taymor (and now her successors) could make improvements. Theater critics roundly thrashed the show in reviews in early February; the producers have said they hope the overhaul will yield a better production that will win praise from critics who come to review it just before June 14, the latest opening-night date.

Through the months “Spider-Man” has remained one of the top-grossing shows on Broadway, earning more than $25 million so far, persisting as an object of fascination for fans of Spider-Man, U2, Ms. Taymor and problem-plagued entertainment. Yet the musical’s typical weekly gross of $1.3 million is barely enough to cover the unusually high running costs of this technically ambitious show.

Positive reviews from critics and improved word of mouth among theatergoers will be essential to increasing grosses by a few hundred thousand dollars a week, which will give the show a better chance of someday paying back its investors.

Members of the current production, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements at the producers’ request, said that the goal of the new creative team was to strip away some of the musical’s darker elements to make it more family-friendly. While audiences now regularly include children accompanied by grown-ups, the new team wants parents to know that the show will be a pleasurable, thrilling experience for young audiences, rather than the more serious, adult-minded fare that Ms. Taymor had in mind.

The producers also reportedly believe that a successful Broadway reception for “Spider-Man” is critical to mounting future, profitable versions of the show in cities like Las Vegas and London.

Still, the musical’s weekly grosses indicate that there has been an audience for Ms. Taymor’s original vision, said Danel Ezralow, the “Spider-Man” dance and aerial choreographer and a longtime Taymor collaborator who was replaced after she was. He said in an interview that he was still rooting for the show, and noted — with a touch of bewilderment — that the producers told him they were pleased with his contributions even as they chose a new choreographer, Chase Brock.

“The musical is doing great, and I hope that it does much better — I really wish the best for the show,” Mr. Ezralow said. “I did hear from everybody that they loved my work, the producers included. But typically with a changeover of government, you also get a new secretary of state,” he said, referring to the addition of Mr. Brock after Mr. McKinley was hired to direct.

In recent weeks actors and producers who have worked with Ms. Taymor on other projects have begun mounting a defense of her work on “Spider-Man.” Mr. Glick echoed them in an interview, recalling that he initially scoffed when his mother alerted him to auditions for “Spider-Man.” But when he heard that the director would be Ms. Taymor, whose film work (“Across the Universe,” “Frida”) he admired, Mr. Glick said he decided to try out for the musical.

“I have always been excited by Julie’s visceral style,” said Mr. Glick, who appeared on Broadway in the original cast of the Tony Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening” and Off Broadway in the critically praised play “Speech & Debate.” “Sometimes style can alienate audiences from the material. But Julie is a rare artist whose distinct images are imbued with emotion, evoking awe and tears.”

While seats at the final performances through Sunday had been selling briskly, it was unclear if Ms. Taymor would be sitting in one, friends of hers said this week. She, Mr. Cohl and Mr. Harris still have not signed a final agreement spelling out her creative rights over the show going forward, despite weeks of negotiations. Bad blood remains between Ms. Taymor, as the former director, and the producers and Bono and the Edge, who helped push her out after nine years of working together.

Ms. Taymor has taken the view that this “Spider-Man” is not what some are calling “the director’s cut”: she was not, after all, given the chance to make all the improvements to the show she wanted, her friends say.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Gone, too, will be some of Ms. Taymor’s head-spinning numbers, like “Deeply Furious,” in which Arachne and her spider ladies-in-waiting become all-powerful by slipping shoes onto their many legs.

That idea is just deeply bizarre.

And deeply funny (at least in my imagination).

What was Julie Taymor thinking?

And what's going to become of her career after this fiasco?

I wonder what sort of shoes they were? Jimmy Choo's? Manolo Blahnik's? What's-his-name, the guy with the red soles, who was just profiled in The New Yorker?

Cue Carrie Bradshaw! 

[Front-Ranger]

This reminds me of some of the things that were said about Ang Lee after The Hulk, and look what he did afterwards!

[Jeff Wrangler]

This reminds me of some of the things that were said about Ang Lee after The Hulk, and look what he did afterwards!

Yes, but the movie industry is a bigger universe than Broadway.

[Front-Ranger]

I wonder if the original play was recorded for us purists? Question for you, Mr. Gleek, will you be sorry to see the Geek Chorus go? I certainly will, as well as Ariachne and her shoes.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/theater/bono-and-the-edge-explain-spider-man-back-story.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1308004456-yZMkacPZ1VRMz7U1pTlmXA&pagewanted=all





Superstars Never Guessed the Size
of ‘Spider-Man’ Challenges
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: June 13, 2011


Bono, left, and the Edge on the set of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” at the Foxwoods Theater.


In their fullest comments yet about the creative clashes this winter inside “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” Bono and the Edge, of U2 — first-time Broadway composers — said they originally embraced Julie Taymor’s script and characters for the show but were wholly ill-prepared for putting her ambitious ideas onstage. They ultimately lost faith in her and quietly maneuvered to overhaul “Spider-Man,” before finally shocking Ms. Taymor, their longtime collaborator, with her ouster in March.

During an interview on the cusp of the show’s long-awaited Broadway opening on Tuesday night, Bono also disclosed that he had not put any of his own money into the $70 million musical, the most expensive in Broadway history, while the Edge said he put in an undisclosed sum to underscore his commitment. The two rock musicians said they never would have tried to make “Spider-Man” if they had known it would take a decade to bring to life. For all that work, Bono added, he felt artistically “impotent” at times and did not love the show until a preview performance late last month.

Bono and the Edge expressed regret at not being on site during previews in December, saying they were locked into a U2 tour of New Zealand and Australia. Most Broadway composers, both veterans and especially newcomers, are in their theaters virtually every night during previews, watching and taking notes. The Edge said they watched videos of performances from Australia yet were not in the theater again until early January, by which time the musical had become a late-night TV punch line.

They then went to work on sound design and new lyrics; despite hints and promises of new music, however, there is only one fully new song in the show, a version of which had been pitched to Ms. Taymor.

Even now, Bono and the Edge said, the musical is just 90 percent complete, with a final 10 percent of work — in their view, chiefly involving the relationship between Peter Parker and the villain, the Green Goblin — to be done this summer.

Bono and the Edge have been opening up recently about their experience with the show in hopes of promoting the much-altered post-Taymor version before theater critics weigh in this week. Critics largely savaged the earlier production of “Spider-Man” as its oft-extended preview period dragged on in February; Ms. Taymor, an acclaimed director of experimental theater and a Tony Award winner for “The Lion King,” defended the version they reviewed as unfinished.

A month later the producers fired Ms. Taymor with the blessing of Bono and the Edge, and she has said virtually nothing publicly since. She was not available for comment on Monday, her spokeswoman said. Ms. Taymor is expected at least to touch on “Spider-Man” in a speech at a theater conference in Los Angeles on Saturday.

For the two leaders of U2, one of the top-selling and most-honored bands of all time, a conversation that delved into the demise of their relationship with Ms. Taymor seemed at once bittersweet and cathartic. After all, Bono said, they had “some of the best days of our lives daydreaming about what you could do on a stage” with Ms. Taymor and their fourth collaborator, the playwright Glen Berger.

But they had no idea how much time it would consume.

“The hours and weeks and months,” Bono said with a distinct melancholy flattening his voice, in an otherwise empty private room at the Spotted Pig restaurant in the West Village, in which he is an investor. “If we thought it would take this long, there is not a chance on earth we’d have done it.”

Ms. Taymor was the only one of the original foursome to be purged on March 9 — after she resisted a so-called Plan X, a new, simplified plot written largely by Mr. Berger, the two musicians said. Ms. Taymor had brought in Mr. Berger, a respected author of highbrow plays, as her writing partner in 2005 on the “Spider-Man” script.

The Edge, who was more present and hands-on this winter than Bono, said he had urged Ms. Taymor to accept the radical overhaul. She, in turn, was pushing to suspend performances in midwinter to make her own changes.

“When Plan X was presented, she said: ‘That could never be achieved in a three-week period. You’d need months to do that, and it probably won’t work anyway for X, Y, and Z reasons,’ ” the Edge recounted. “At that moment, when that was her response, the producers felt that whatever Julie would do with a hiatus was more of a polishing job than a top-to-bottom rethink of the show.”

Asked whether he and Bono plotted against Ms. Taymor, the Edge replied: “Julie was clearly exhausted, overwrought, and we all thought that if we don’t tread carefully, she’s going to walk. We were tip-toeing around her, and I think that probably meant that people were careful in what they said or told her. I certainly didn’t feel I could be 100 percent frank with Julie, and that was because I felt she was carrying so much of the weight.”

In hindsight, Bono said, starting preview performances of “Spider-Man” on Broadway in November without an out-of-town tryout was “a terrible decision” that put enormous pressure on Ms. Taymor. But such a test run was impossible, Bono added, because the show’s aerial technology and massive, pop-up sets were built to fit its New York home, the Foxwoods Theater.

“Looking back,” Bono said, “we, through inexperience, had no sense of the implications of that decision. That the first time anyone saw a full run-through of the story, songs, staging, and show was the first night of previews. Can you imagine that? No one had seen the whole thing before everyone saw it.”

But the composers acknowledged that they were hardly in the dark about Ms. Taymor’s vision of “Spider-Man.”

“We read her script, we were part of developing that script, we thought it was great,” Bono said of the version that critics ripped to shreds in February.

The two men attended developmental workshops over the last three years where the dialogue was read, characters fleshed out. It was not until they took a month off from U2 last fall to work on the musical that, they said, they realized the magnitude of turning the script into a full-blooded show. “Julie was trying to wrestle with the logistics as well as the art, and that’s when I felt fairly impotent,” Bono said.

Bono and the Edge left for a U2 tour in New Zealand in late November without seeing that first of the record-setting 183 preview performances of the show, the final one on Monday night. They said they were aghast at what they saw on the videos: the plot was muddled, as was the music, and “Spider-Man” still lacked an ending.

Ms. Taymor encouraged them to come back to New York and help her, particularly with the refining of lyrics and of the sound. The Edge said they could not cancel U2’s tour of Australia because the concerts were booked.

Once they returned, they initially agreed with Ms. Taymor to focus on “clarifying the story,” the Edge said. Some cast members, though, began suggesting radical changes, like moving the spectacular aerial battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin from the end of Act I to the climax of Act II — an idea that had occurred to the Edge too. Mr. Berger, the playwright, began developing new script ideas.

“Glen was one of the early believers that there was possibly a more simple version,” the Edge said. “Reluctantly I think most of us came to believe that he was right.” Those outlines of a new show are now apparent in the 2.0 version of “Spider-Man” that will open on Tuesday. A new creative team was recruited in late winter, with Philip William McKinley taking over direction.

But Bono said he felt the show was finally greater than the sum of its parts — parts, though, that did gave him frissons of excitement way back when.

“The first time I loved ‘Spider-Man’ was two and a half weeks ago,” he admitted, but added, “Even when I was really angry about its obtuse story and some of the awful readings of the music — even then I was still saying, it was kind of magical.”

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/theater/reviews/spider-man-turn-off-the-dark-opens-after-changes-review.html?pagewanted=all




Theater Review
'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'
1 Radioactive Bite, 8 Legs
and 183 Previews
The mega-expensive musical is no longer the ungodly,
indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore.

By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: June 14, 2011


Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
Reeve Carney in the title role and Patrick Page as
the Green Goblin in this reworking, which finally opened
Tuesday at the Foxwoods Theater.


There is something to be said for those dangerous flying objects — excuse me, I mean actors — that keep whizzing around the Foxwoods Theater, where the mega-expensive musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has entered the latest chapter of its fraught and anxious existence. After all, if you’re worried that somebody might fall on top of you from a great height, the odds are that you won’t nod off.

Those adrenaline-raising acrobatics are a necessary part of the lumpy package that is “Spider-Man,” which had its long-delayed official opening on Tuesday night, after 180-some preview performances. First seen and deplored by critics several months ago — when impatient journalists (including me) broke the media embargo for reviews as the show’s opening date kept sliding into a misty future — this singing comic book is no longer the ungodly, indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore.

So is this ascent from jaw-dropping badness to mere mediocrity a step upward? Well, until last weekend, when I caught a performance of this show’s latest incarnation, I would have recommended “Spider-Man” only to carrion-feasting theater vultures. Now, if I knew a less-than-precocious child of 10 or so, and had several hundred dollars to throw away, I would consider taking him or her to the new and improved “Spider-Man.”

The first time I saw the show, it was like watching the Hindenburg burn and crash. This time “Spider-Man” — which was originally conceived by the (since departed) visionary director Julie Taymor with the rock musicians Bono and the Edge (of U2) — stirred foggy, not unpleasant childhood memories of second-tier sci-fi TV in the 1960s, with blatantly artificial sets and actors in unconvincing alien masks.

“Spider-Man” may be the only Broadway show of the past half-century to make international headlines regularly, often with the adjective “troubled” attached to its title. So I’m assuming you already know at least a bit of its long and tortuous history of revision, cancellation, indecision and injury (from production-related accidents), and of its true star.

That would be Ms. Taymor (who retains an “original direction by” credit), who in the 1990s was hailed as the new Ziegfeld after reinventing a Disney animated film, “The Lion King,” as a classy, mass-appeal Broadway blockbuster. The prospect of her hooking up with Spidey, the nerdy-cool Marvel Comics crime fighter, seemed like a swell opportunity for another lucrative melding of pageantry, puppetry and culture high and low.

Those elements were certainly in abundance in the “Spider-Man” I saw several months ago. That production, which featured a script by Ms. Taymor and Glen Berger, placed its young superhero in a broader meta-context of Greek mythology and American Pop art, with a “geek chorus” of commentators and a classical goddess named Arachne as the morally ambiguous mentor of Spidey and his awkward alter ego, Peter Parker.

Unfortunately, traditional niceties like a comprehensible plot and characters got lost in the stew. After critics let loose with howls of derision, “Spider-Man” took a three-week performance hiatus to reassemble itself, with tools that included audience focus groups. Exit Ms. Taymor. (Bono, the Edge and Mr. Berger stayed put.)

Enter Philip William McKinley — a director whose credits include several versions of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s “Greatest Show on Earth” — and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a writer of both plays and comic books. Now if you check out the directory of paid theater listings in The New York Times, you’ll see that the title “Spider-Man” is prefaced by the promising (if slightly desperate-sounding) words: “REIMAGINED! New Story! New Music!”

This is not false advertising. “Spider-Man” now bears only a scant resemblance to the muddled fever dream that was. It is instead not unlike one of those perky, tongue-in-cheek genre-spoof musicals (“Dames at Sea,” “Little Shop of Horrors”) that used to sprout like mushrooms in Greenwich Village, with witty cutout scenery and dialogue bristling with arch quotation marks.

Well, that is, if you could imagine such a show being stripped of its irony and supersized by a diabolical mad scientist with an enlarging ray. Though “Spider-Man” has shed its geek chorus and scaled down the role of Arachne (T. V. Carpio), it retains the most spectacular-looking centerpieces from the Taymor version. (George Tsypin is the set designer.) They include a vertiginous vision of Manhattan as seen from the top of the Chrysler Building, judiciously repositioned for plot purposes.

But they do seem out of proportion to what has become a straightforward children’s entertainment with a mildly suspenseful story, two-dimensional characters, unapologetically bad jokes and the kind of melodious rock tunes that those under 12 might be familiar with from listening to their parents’ salad-day favorites of the 1980s and ’90s. The puppet figures and mask-dominated costumes worn by the supporting villains still seem to have wandered in from a theme park. The projection designs by Kyle Cooper continue to suggest vintage MTV videos, as does the unimaginative choreography by Daniel Ezralow and Chase Brock.

The bonus is that anyone can follow the story now. (Boy is bitten by radioactive spider, boy acquires amazing powers, boy fights crime, boy has doubts, boy triumphs.) And the performers no longer seem overwhelmed by what surrounds them. Their characters now register as distinct if one-note personalities.

In the title role Reeve Carney is an appropriately nonthreatening crush object for tweens, an appealingly agitated Everydweeb with great cheekbones and a sanitized, lite version of a concert rocker’s voice. He is well paired with the wryly sincere Jennifer Damiano (“Next to Normal”) as Mary Jane Watson, Peter’s girlfriend.

Ms. Carpio’s Arachne (now a beneficent fairy godmother rather than an erotically troubling dream spider) provides the most arresting vocal moments with her ululating nasality. Michael Mulheren is suitably blustery and fatuous as the pandering newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson. And Patrick Page, as the megalomaniacal scientist who becomes the evil mutant called the Green Goblin, provides the one reason for adults unaccompanied by minors to see the show.

His role has been expanded, and Mr. Page uses the extra time not just to terrorize the audience amiably, as you expect mean green scene stealers to do. (He has charmingly reinvented that staple of melodramatic villains, the sustained insane cackle.) He also has become the show’s entertaining id, channeling and deflecting our own dark thoughts about this lopsided spectacle.

“I’m a $65 million circus tragedy,” he crows at one point. “Well, more like 75 million.”

But even Mr. Page is only a sideshow (not to switch metaphors) to the main event. And that’s the sight of real people — mostly stuntmen — flying over the audience, and the implicit danger therein. (An amplified voice warns the audience not only to turn off their cellphones but also to avoid trying to catch a ride with the professional fliers.)

Unlike the first time I saw “Spider-Man,” the flying (the first instance of which occurs about 45 minutes into the show) went off without a hitch on this occasion. The potential magic is undercut, though, by the very visible wires and harnesses that facilitate these aerodynamics.

Partly because the performers are masked, you experience little of the vicarious wonder and exhilaration that comes from watching Peter Pan or even Mary Poppins ride the air in other musicals. The effect is rather like looking at anonymous daredevils who have been strapped into a breakneck ride at an amusement park. Come to think of it, Coney Island might be a more satisfying choice.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Ouch!

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/theater_review_a_critics_final.html

Theater Review:
A Critic's Final Word on
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
By: Scott Brown
6/14/11 at 10:00 PM


Reeve Carney in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

With any luck, this will be the last time you'll run across Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark  in this space. I can't say I'm sad to be through with it. The thrill is gone. So is the insanity and the walleyed, aneurysm-in-progress fun of it all. I'm sorry to report that the eight-legged, nine-lived megalomusical—which finally opened tonight, in its newly tamed, scared-straight and heavily Zolofted post-Taymor state—has deteriorated from mindblowingly misbegotten carnival-of-the-damned to merely embarrassing dud. Awash in a garbage-gyre of expository dialogue pumped in by script doctor/comic-book vet Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, its lavish stage pictures turned to colloidal mush by director Philip William McKinley and choreographer Chase Brock, Spidey 2.0 is indeed leaner and more linear, and its story has been brutally clarified: It's now all too clear how very, very little was there in the first place. Spider-Man violates the first rule of pop fantasy: Never lose the distinction between beautiful simplicity and rank simplemindedness.

On the plus side: The flying rigs work now. No hitches, no potential manslaughter charges. Hooray. But don't worry, thrill-seekers: Every airborne actor still provides a fresh opportunity for you to fear for their lives, as well as your own. Spidey's best trick—his habit of arresting an overhead swing at its apex and suddenly thunking down into the orchestra seats—remains intact.

But much of the show's acromegalic Herman Munster charm, its faith in its own grotesque incoherence, its devotion to delusion, has been crudely lobotomized out of it, in order to make way for what studio executives often refer to as (barf) relationships. This means a lot of empty, brow-furrowed cliché-spouting, as couples come together and fall apart. Turn Off the Dark has trimmed its running time, but you'd never guess it, listening to Reeve Carney's Peter Parker and Jennifer Damiano's Mary Jane Watson prattle through their insipid pas de dumb. Carney, free of Taymor's clutches and costume designs, now styles himself the Axe-scented club-stud he resembles in "candid" photos. He's got a strong, shreddy tenor and stage presence to spare, but newly empowered nerd he most certainly ain't. There's no wonder in him, no thrill-of-first-flight, just a cock-rock entitlement amplified by his new choreography, which most amounts to strutting and posing. Meanwhile, Taymor's pet spider-goddess, Arachne (T.V. Carpio), has been reduced to some sort of vague, astral cheerleader-figure.

In this absence of, well, everything that might constitute drama, Patrick Page's Norman Osborn/Green Goblin has been handed the whole show. Pre-rehab, Page was the best thing about the musical; even the technical glitches, which could sometimes take upwards of ten minutes to repair, were made more than palatable by his natural showmanship, easy patter, and sly self-mockery. Now he's been given scene after scene in which to cut up: The Goblin calls the Daily Bugle ... and gets annoyed by one of those irritating voice-mail menus! You know the ones I mean? With the "press one for English," "if you are satisfied with your message," etc., etc.? What's that? You do know them? You've known them since 1990? You don't say! It's the kind of stuff that wouldn't make the cut on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, but Spidey's new handlers spread this soothing poop liberally, over everything, usually to cover the now-choppy set changes and splatter-pattern production numbers. (With no new money to spend, McKinley and Brock usually just clear the enormous stage and let cast-members run amok in the void. The high-school musical rule of "everybody run this way! Okay, now, everybody run that way!" is very much in effect.)

No amount of mulch or manure can cover up the music, which is, by far, the show's greatest weakness. (Which is saying something.) With Taymor in charge, Spider-Man  essentially ignored its score, and invited us to ignore it, too. We happily obliged. Now, the inert echoplay of the Edge's music and the dippy teen-poet vacuousness of Bono's lyrics cannot and will not be denied. (From "And you say rise above / Into the skies above" to "All the weirdos in the world / are here right now in New York City," there's perhaps not a single defensible line—and Edge, in his wisdom, spaces those lines at arid rock distances, making you wait whole seconds for unimaginative rhymes most of us could Mad-Lib in an instant.) "Bullying by Numbers," "DIY World," "A Freak Like Me Needs Company," and the narcotizing ballad "If the World Should End" (the undisputed nadir of last weekend's Tony-awards ceremony) demonstrate, beyond a doubt, that the boys from Dublin never had a damned clue what a musical was or how to dramatize action and emotion in song. Spider-Man  was a bad Julie Taymor musical; it is now, wholeheartedly, a terrible U2 musical, with a governing dramaturgy that owes more to Pop than Achtung Baby.

Spider-Man —to beat my running metaphor into the ground and then leave it for dead—is like that good-and-crazy friend with a highly entertaining substance-abuse problem, the one who went off and got clean, and came back a different and diminished person. With his manias and overmuchness, you realized, after he returned, how very little you ever had to offer one another. With Taymor gone, and the ruins of her monstrous Lovecraftian vision overrun by Lilliputians, there's simply nothing to see here, other than the sort of "stunt spectacular" that wouldn't look out of place amidst a backdrop of roller coasters and toddler-vomit. It's a vast emptiness, void even of its animating madness. It shuffles and smiles and subsides, like a good inmate, its hummingbird heartbeat slowed to a crawl. Put your head to Spidey's chest, and all you'll hear is the dull smack of a damp wad of cash hitting the boards.


Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is at the Foxwoods Theatre, 213 West 42nd Street.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/theater_review_a_critics_final.html

Julie Taymor Showed Up to the
Spider-Man Premiere
By: Julie Gerstein
6/15/11 at 12:53 AM

Tuesday night was the official opening of the much-troubled Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and it marked a return of sorts for the show's original director, Julie Taymor, who was seen embracing her former collaborator Bono after the performance. Speaking during the curtain call, Bono praised Taymor's creativity and mentioned that "by the way, you’re looking hot, Julie.” And then Taymor thanked “this cast, this crew, these musicians, and this incredible creative team that I worked with for a long time.”

The show's first official non-preview performance was dripping with celebrity audience members, so many that the performance began 50 minutes late to accommodate Spike Lee, Steve Martin, Liam Neeson, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Bono, by the way, took in the show with his old pal former president Bill Clinton. Clinton attended the performance with daughter Chelsea and a small entourage, and was seen guffawing throughout — especially during a scene in which the Green Goblin becomes frustrated with his overly complicated voice-mail system. Apparently the Green Goblin is a baby boomer, too.