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

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Aloysius J. Gleek:




Reeve Carney:
the new Spidey (on Broadway)!









Reeve Carney
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reeve Carney (born April 18, 1983) is an American singer-songwriter and actor.




Early life
Carney was born and raised in Southern California. Brought up in a musical family, he learned to play the piano before he took his first steps. His mother couldn’t afford guitar lessons while Reeve was growing up, so she took him to blues clubs. When Carney was eight years old, he sang at Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan, and later got to sing with Michael Jackson. At the age of sixteen, he got the chance to perform at B.B King’s Blues club.

Musical career
Carney's band, appropriately called Carney, consists of Reeve, his brother Zane Carney on guitar, Aiden Moore on bass and Jon Epcar on drums. Carney released their debut album, Mr. Green Vol. 1, in May 2010. The group attributes their sound to their very own idols such as Walt Disney, The Beatles, and Tim Burton.

Reeve has toured with musicians such as Jonny Lang, The Black Eyed Peas, The Pretty Reckless, Athlete and The Veronicas. He says that he is a musician first, that music is his passion, and that all he wants to do is make great art.

Current projects
Reeve is currently residing in New York City, where he is preparing to star as Spider-Man in the new musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, scheduled to open in November 2010. He is working with director Julie Taymor as well as musicians Bono and The Edge.

Taymor first discovered Reeve at one of his band's shows, after which she asked him to audition for her film The Tempest.  The Tempest  will be released by the end of 2010. Reeve continues to play shows, mostly in New York, with Carney. The rest of the band is currently rehearsing as part of the pit band for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.


Website: www.reevecarneymusic.com

Monika:
this all sounds so crazy that it almost has to be good :)

Aloysius J. Gleek:




Good luck, everybody--and be safe!

 :o




http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/curtain-to-rise-on-spider-man/?hp



Curtain to Rise
on ‘Spider-Man’
By PATRICK HEALY
November 28, 2010, 2:12 pm

The marquee of the Foxwoods Theater,
where “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”
begins performances on Sunday night.

Ready or not, here comes “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”

The most expensive show in Broadway history, at $65 million, or more than twice as much as the previous record-holder, “Shrek the Musical,” “Spider-Man” will hold its first preview performance at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday before more than 1,900 paying theatergoers, reporters, and several of the musical’s nervous producers and investors.

They will witness the latest attempt to run “Spider-man” from start to finish without stopping, after several failed outings over the past week, when the director, Julie Taymor, had to pause to work on scene transitions and some of the show’s unprecedented technical and special effects. Most new Broadway shows have at least one dress rehearsal before an invitation-only audience, but the producers canceled plans for one to give Ms. Taymor more time to work.

Ms. Taymor expects the first performance to stop at some point to work through technical glitches, executives involved with the production said on Sunday. In addition, the final 10 minutes are not fully finished and may not be entirely staged, according to the executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Ms. Taymor and the producers had forbidden public comment on the backstage work.

“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” a musical version of the Marvel Comics superhero story, has attracted enormous media attention and public interest by Broadway standards, in large part because of the money and the talent involved. U2’s Bono and the Edge signed on to create the show nine years ago and have written a full-length score, their first for Broadway. Ms. Taymor soon joined as a Tony Award winner for one of the last musical spectaculars to open on Broadway, “The Lion King.”

The complexity of “Spider-Man” – particularly its flying sequences over the heads of audience members – has also stoked curiosity as well as concern, after two actors were injured (one broke his wrists) performing aerial stunts this fall. And the show’s growing cost – it is likely to exceed $65 million in the end – has drawn attention given the economy and the difficulty of raising money to mount the show. The musical was originally supposed to start performances last January.

The show has been a work in progress since rehearsals began in August. A new ending was conceived in the last few weeks by Ms. Taymor; her co-author of the book, Glen Berger; and by Bono and the Edge. The ending involves a mixture of spectacular effects and intense, intimate moments involving the lead characters Peter Parker (played by Reeve Carney) and Mary Jane Watson (Jennifer Damiano). But 12-hour rehearsal days (though everyone had Thanksgiving off) have not been enough to deal with the show’s many technical elements and the new ending.

The producers had already delayed the latest scheduled start of preview performances by two weeks; Ms. Taymor has said that a further delay would be too expensive. The producers have also canceled several matinee performances in December to give more time to Ms. Taymor and the cast and crew to work on the show.

A spokesman for the production said on Sunday that the estimated running time was two and a half hours, but he acknowledged that he could not say with precision how long the performance would last. Ms. Taymor and the show’s lead producer, Michael Cohl, declined interview requests.

Halting a show midperformance during previews to fix problems; making changes during early weeks of paid performances; and tinkering with production numbers and finales are not unheard of with new and technically ambitious musicals. But most of this work usually occurs during tryout performances in other cities, where producers go to solve problems far from the eyes of Broadway. “Spider-Man,” however, is opening cold on Sunday evening at the 1,932-seat Foxwoods Theater because the producers decided an out-of-town run would be financially unfeasible.

Another new musical, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” opened cold on Broadway this fall. Several performances were paused because of technical problems, and the show lacked a finale while the initial one was reworked. “Women on the Verge” opened to largely negative reviews in November. “Spider-Man” is scheduled to open on Wednesday night, Jan. 11, 2011, with most theater critics’ reviews coming out the next day.

One threat to starting performances has been tackled: Safety inspectors from the New York State Department of Labor have signed off on the 27 flying sequences in “Spider-Man” without asking for substantive changes, the executives with the production said. The inspectors made their fourth visit to the Foxwoods Theater on Friday to assess the most technically complex flying sequences — some for the second time — and gave the green light to hold Sunday’s performance. The department’s approval is required by law for aerial stunts used in public performances.

The executives added that Ms. Taymor had not made any changes on her own to the major flying scenes, including an elaborate aerial battle over the heads of audience members (without a net) at the end of Act 1 between Spider-Man and one of the show’s villains, the Green Goblin.

Leo Rosales, a spokesman for the state Department of Labor, said in an interview on Sunday that the inspectors had no issues with the safety of the flying maneuvers or their sequence in the show. “We are set,” Mr. Rosales said.

“Spider-Man” has timed a major media rollout to the start of preview performances; the CBS news show “60 Minutes” will broadcast a segment about the musical on Sunday night, a rare feature on a Broadway show on that much-watched television show. The musical is also set to begin running two television commercials in the New York area on Monday; the commercials were created by Jacob Cohl, a son of the lead producer.

The younger Cohl is a filmmaker and photographer who previously directed the documentary “Salt of the Earth” about the Rolling Stones. The band has long worked with Michael Cohl as their lead concert promoter. Jacob Cohl and his crew have hundreds of hours of footage after filming for months at the theater, in rehearsal rooms, and at meetings including Bono, the Edge and Ms. Taymor. The footage is the property of the musical production. If “Spider-Man” is a hit, few doubt that the Cohls and Ms. Taymor, who is also a filmmaker, will spin a documentary or other film project out of the material.

Among those expected in the audience on Sunday night are Lesley Stahl, the “60 Minutes” correspondent on the “Spider-Man” segment, and Sean Hayes, the star of the Broadway musical “Promises, Promises,” according to the executives with the production. Bono and the Edge will not be in the house, however, because they are on tour with U2 in Australia until late December.

Front-Ranger:
I second that!!

Aloysius J. Gleek:



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/theater/29spiderman.html?hp


Lines for a First Look at ‘Spider-Man’ Musical
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: November 28, 2010


Eight-year-old Logan Eayres with his grandmother Ruth Cardace was the first child in the long line.



Chris Canales, 4, wore a "Spider-Man" T-shirt, sweatshirt and hat.


Eight-year-old Logan Eayres was the first child in the long line of ticket-holders for Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” on Sunday evening, and he needed only a split second to say why he was so excited to see the long-awaited musical about his favorite super-hero.

“He’s going to be swinging out over our heads,” Logan said, “and I want him to fall on me so I can bring him home.”

Logan and his grandmother Ruth Cardace, both of Valley Stream, Long Island, were among hundreds of people – most of them adults – who snaked along West 42nd Street for nearly a full city block as they waited to enter the Foxwoods Theater for “Spider-Man,” which opened Sunday night. Ms. Cardace had bought their third-row seats this fall for Logan’s birthday on Nov. 7; those tickets, like many held by Spidey-goers for the first performance, were originally for the first preview that was scheduled for Nov. 14, which was delayed until Sunday night because more work was needed on the show.

“We’ve been waiting for what feels like a very long time, so we’re extra-excited, aren’t we?” Ms. Cardace asked her grandson, who nodded enthusiastically.

A bit down the line was Billy Jackson, also 8, and his father, Scott, who had rearranged their trip from Cincinnati after the Nov. 14 performances was canceled; instead, they made a Thanksgiving outing to New York and caught the holiday parade and other attractions, though “Spider-Man” remained the climatic moment of the trip.

“He’s one of my favorite characters in the movies,” Billy said. Asked what he was looking forward to most, he said, “That it’s going to be good like the movies. And I’d like to see some flying.”

For costume bragging rights, no one could probably compete with 4-year-old Chris Canales, who wore a “Spider-Man” T-shirt, sweatshirt and hat, and said that he had a Spidey undershirt and underwear on, too. He came from Dix Hills, N.Y., with his godparents Bryan and Divina Salamone, who were also showing off some Spidey red for the musical, fo which they’d also purchased tickets several months ago.

“We told Chris that Spider-Man had gotten a little sick,” Mr. Salamone said, accounting for the production delays, “but now he’s better and ready to fight the bad guys.”

Among the adults in line was Chris McAvey, a 24-year-old “fan of Spider-man since the age of 5,” who bought tickets last winter when the performances were still scheduled to start in February 2010. Asked about his expectations for the night, he said, “Let me put it this way: For the time I’ve had to wait to see this, it better be good!”

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