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Ouch! Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark 2.0 reviews NOT coming up roses for Spidey
Aloysius J. Gleek:
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This Week on "60 Minutes Overtime"
Overtime Original
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Bono and The Edge: The Making of "Spider-Man"
Get a rare glimpse of two musical legends during their creative process. "60 Minutes" cameras capture U2's Bono and The Edge in the moment as they create songs for the highly anticipated musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark."
http://www.cbsnews.com/60minutesovertime#ixzz16mAFs54H
About 60 Minutes Overtime
60 Minutes Overtime is a web show that begins where the television broadcast ends. Each week, Overtime will air original web videos with new angles on 60 Minutes reports, conversations with correspondents, and revealing moments from our 40-year archive. After 60 Minutes credits roll on Sundays, continue the conversation here on 60MinutesOvertime.com
Aloysius J. Gleek:
Uh-oh.
:-\
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/concussion-sidelines-spider-man-actress/?src=twt&twt=artsbeat
Concussion Sidelines ‘Spider-Man’ Actress
By PATRICK HEALY
December 3, 2010, 3:58 pm
A lead actress in the new Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” suffered a concussion at the first preview performance on Sunday night when, standing offstage, she was struck in the head by a rope holding a piece of equipment, a spokesman for the actress said on Friday. The actress, Natalie Mendoza, who plays the villainess Arachne, did not perform on Thursday night and is not expected to return before Tuesday.
Ms. Mendoza did perform at the second performance, on Wednesday night, against her doctor’s advice, said the spokesman, Shea Martin. A spokesman for the production, Rick Miramontez, said, “It was her choice, and she insisted on doing it.”
The show’s director, Julie Taymor, and the lead producer, Michael Cohl, were informed before Wednesday’s performance that Ms. Mendoza had a concussion, Mr. Miramontez said. The role of Arachne involves several flying sequences, including one in the first act where Ms. Mendoza is spun upside-down. Mr. Cohl would not comment and Ms. Taymor did not respond to interview requests by mid-Friday afternoon.
On Friday, representatives for the Actors’ Equity union and the New York State Department of Labor, which monitors safety in public performances, said they were looking into the accident.
Ms. Mendoza is the third actor in “Spider-Man” to be hurt working on the production; during rehearsals this fall, one dancer broke his wrists after landing incorrectly during a flying stunt, while another actor injured his feet doing the same stunt.
The actress did not report her injury on Sunday night; otherwise, Mr. Miramontez said, it would have been included in the stage manager’s post-performance report. The seriousness of the accident was also not clear; Mr. Martin said that she may have been hit by the equipment on the rope, as opposed to the rope itself, or that the rope may have been made by re-enforced materials. Ms. Mendoza, 30, is 5’6’’ tall with a slim, athletic build.
At some point afterward Ms. Mendoza saw a doctor — the cast had the day off on Monday — and, late Tuesday morning, she sent out a message via Twitter that simply said, “Concussion.” She informed the production on Tuesday that she had a concussion; the spokesman, Mr. Miramontez, said it was noted in the stage manager’s report for the Tuesday rehearsal.
On Wednesday, Ms. Mendoza told Ms. Taymor and the producers “that she strongly wished to perform” in the preview that night even though her doctor had advised against it, Mr. Miramontez said. The particulars of the discussion about allowing Ms. Mendoza to perform on Wednesday night remain unclear.
Ms. Taymor was in rehearsal on Friday and interview requests for her were pending with Mr. Miramontez and her personal publicist, Chris Kanarick.
On Thursday Ms. Mendoza fell ill, and the production announced that night that her understudy, America Olivo, was performing as Arachne through the weekend because Ms. Mendoza had a concussion.
Ms. Olivo is now scheduled to play Arachne until at least Tuesday night; she did not reply to an e-mail request for comment on Friday.
“Spider-Man” is the most technically complex show ever on Broadway, with 27 aerial sequences of characters flying and scores of pieces of moving scenery, some of which are among the biggest on a New York stage right now. Yet the show remains under-rehearsed: Ms. Taymor acknowledged in an interview in November that “the musical probably won’t be ready to do without stopping and fixing things in the first few performances.”
Performances had already been delayed by two weeks in November, at a cost of a few million dollars in ticket revenue and rehearsal expenses. “Spider-Man” has cost $65 million, more than twice as much as any Broadway show in history; it is scheduled to open on Jan. 11, 2011.
The actress declined an interview request made through Mr. Martin. He also declined a request to interview Ms. Mendoza’s doctor.
A spokesman for the state Labor Department, Joseph Morrissey, issued a statement in response to questions: “The Department of Labor’s agreement with the production says that if an accident or equipment malfunction happens as it relates to an aerial performance, we need to be notified. The production has explained to us the details of the accident. They also indicated that they have made changes to prevent this type of accident from happening again. We plan to follow up regularly to ensure that these modifications are adequate.”
Asked what changes had been made as a result of the accident to protect the actors and stagehands, Mr. Miramontez said that Mr. Cohl did not have specific details but “takes the issue of safety extremely seriously and everything is done to make sure that everyone involved in the show is safe and is knowledgeable about safety.”
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Aloysius J. Gleek on November 29, 2010, 06:25:07 pm ---Maybe actors should now call the production (at the Foxwoods Theater) the 'Arachnid play' :o!
--- End quote ---
:laugh: The production is so plagued with disasters it's enough to give you arachnophobia.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
New York Magazine 's Year End Wrap-Up
A Very, Very Big Year
In 2010, over-the-top was often just right.
By Adam Sternbergh
Published Dec 5, 2010
If you were to gather the culture stars of 2010 in a room and ask them to retroactively pitch their biggest ideas, it would sound like an inmate’s meeting at an asylum for the delusionally grandiose....Yet if there was one thread that connected the highlights (and a few failures) of the last year, it was this: the Grand Gesture, the Big Gamble, the all-out Swing for the Fences....
How to Make a Splash
on Broadway
Estimated budgets of the year’s most expensive Broadway shows.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
:P :-X :-\
Uh-oh.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/spider-man-opening-delayed-again/?hpw
‘Spider-Man’ Opening Delayed Again
By PATRICK HEALY
December 16, 2010, 1:58 pm
The lead producers of the new Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” have decided again to delay its opening night, now scheduled for Jan. 11, until sometime in February, two people involved with the musical said on Thursday. With preview performances now under way the delay is intended to provide more time for the creators to stage a new final number, make further rewrites to the dialogue and consider adding and cutting scenes and perhaps inserting new music from the composers, U2’s Bono and the Edge, who will resume working full-time on the show in late December.
The producers and creators are still weighing the extent of the changes that they believe the musical needs before theater critics see it during the week before opening night, according to the two people involved with the show, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the producers and their spokesman are supposed to make the only public comments. The spokesman, Rick Miramontez, declined to comment on Thursday.
Michael Cohl, one of the lead producers, is expected to announce the new date for opening night on Thursday or Friday, the two people said. It will be the fourth major delay in performances since January 2010, when previews were originally supposed to begin; the first two delays were due to problems raising money to mount the $65 million show, while a two-week delay in November, caused by the need for more rehearsal time, also pushed back the opening, which had been set for Dec. 21.
“Spider-Man” is one of the most highly anticipated shows on Broadway in years, given the talents of the director, Julie Taymor (a Tony Award winner for “The Lion King”), and Bono and the Edge, who are making their Broadway debuts, as well as the potential for a live musical about the popular comic-book superhero. Adding to the expectations is the show’s price tag, more than twice as much as “Shrek the Musical,” previously the most expensive musical ever.
Reflecting the view of some audience members who have criticized the show on blogs, Twitter and Facebook, Ms. Taymor and the producers have concluded that Act II has storytelling problems that need to be fixed. While Act I is a familiar rendition of Peter Parker turning into Spider-Man, Act II is largely the invention of Ms. Taymor and Bono, and includes some major reversals that can be hard to understand in the fast-moving show.
Bono and the Edge have been on tour with U2 in New Zealand and Australia since Thanksgiving; they have yet to see a performance of the musical, which they began working on nine years ago. They will be returning to New York before Christmas and are expected to become regular presences at the Foxwoods Theater through mid-to-late January, when they have to prepare for February concerts in South Africa. Bono and the Edge are not believed to be at work on any new numbers for the show, but the two people said that they might write some once they assess the show and huddle with Ms. Taymor.
Ms. Taymor and the playwright Glen Berger, who wrote the book together, have been inserting revised dialogue at almost every performance to clarify the action, with special focus given to Act II as well as the four characters who serve as a so-called Geek Chorus, comic-book devotees who serve as narrators. The two people involved with the show said that no decision has been made about hiring a script doctor to work on the dialogue and plot; some executives close to Mr. Cohl, the producer, have been urging him to bring in an outside set of eyes to work on the story. But the two people said that Ms. Taymor was fully aware that the musical has problems and had not been defensive about the criticisms of the storytelling.
Snags in the ambitious technical production have been largely smoothed out since the first preview performance on Nov. 28, when the show had to stop five times. Still, new elements are being added. At Wednesday night’s performance, for a scene toward the end of the show, a large net deployed to serve as a web where the villainous spider-woman Arachne and Peter Parker have their final confrontation.
Just pulling off that moment with the deployed net took a significant amount of time to plan, design and rehearse, the two people said; still to come is inserting a major final number, which is now in the works, but the two people said they could not guess how long it would take to perfect — one of the reasons for delaying the opening night.
The actress who plays Arachne, Natalie Mendoza, returned to the production on Wednesday night after a nearly two-week absence to recover from a concussion that she suffered backstage at the first preview performance, when a rope struck her in the head.
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