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Spider-Man's secret identity: He's a flop
Published On Sun Jan 30 2011
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark makes the beloved wall-crawler's adventures kind of dull.
By Richard Ouzounian Theatre Critic
NEW YORK—Let's cut to the chase.
The only truly amazing thing about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, is how unequivocally awful it is.
This $65-million musical, with its years of postponements and months of previews, lies there on the stage of the Foxwoods Theatre like the biggest beached whale in existence.
In fact, the quality of the show is so bad that the cynical part of me wonders if all the sound and fury about its technical troubles might have been nothing more than strategic cover.
Think about it. By the time you see a preview performance (as I did) that takes place without interruption, injury, or intervention from the U.N. Security Council, you might think it's such a triumph that you're willing to forget the value of the experience.
When I went to Spider-Man recently, the show had just finished two months of previews (for which the audience is paying full price), more than the normal gestation period usually allowed on Broadway. The show recently announced one more delay to its official opening night, moving it to March 15 (Ides of March, anyone?), which would mean that it will have had more than 31/2 months of previews, after months of earlier delays in even getting to that point. Only an elephant takes longer to give birth.
So most of the critical fraternity in NYC are privately letting it be known they plan to see the show over the next week and will probably be filing their notices on Feb. 8, which is the day after the opening was supposed to have taken place.
The new final flying sequence had been added on Jan. 19 and U2's Bono (co-composer of the score, along with The Edge) has let it be known that there are going to be no new songs or substantial changes to the existing ones. So why wait any longer? I bought a $140 ticket in the centre of the “Flying Circle” and went down to see the show.
With all respect to director Julie Taymor, I doubt that waiting another month, or two, or three, would have resulted in my seeing a much better product. A bit smoother, perhaps, a bit less lumpy oatmeal-like in its scenic transitions, but still the same thing that's currently onstage.
And what is that? A fairly straightforward saga about Peter Parker, his spider bite, his magic powers, his love for Mary Jane Watson and threats from the evil Green Goblin who's out to make everyone unhappy.
All of this will seem normal enough to fans of Spider-Man in the character's previous incarnations. But you might not be ready for the changes that authors Taymor and Glen Berger have added, like the character of Arachne, the evil spider-woman (didn't Chita Rivera play this already?), or the Geek chorus, adolescents who make it look like The Big Bang Theory cast have wandered into a musical and aren't sure what they're doing there.
But you don't go on a thrill ride for the narrative, you go for the dips and curves and stomach-churning thrills. That's what Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark promised to deliver. With all of its numerous cast accidents and skyrocketing budget, you'd certainly think you're going to get them.
Alas, they don't materialize.
Every now and then, a single one of Spider-Man's aerial trajectories has a breathtaking grace to it, but when any kind of sustained combat is attempted, you can see the wires, in every sense of the word. It's simply not very exciting and that's the ultimate failure of the show.
In a Broadway world where Green Day had proved in American Idiot that rock could make a musical soar, I was really looking forward to what Bono and The Edge were going to provide here. But what comes through the sound system is a kind of audio sludge, with no melodies, rhythms or lyrics standing out, except for one haunting ballad, “The Boy Falls from the Sky.”
There have been complaints about the sound system since the first preview and they don't seem to have been addressed satisfactorily. One wonders if they ever will be.
People trying to find something nice to say have turned to the set designs of George Tsypin and, as each new vista unfolds, they do have an awesome graphic-novel grandeur about them.
The trouble is that they totally dwarf the human-sized actors standing next to them, so appealing performers like Reeve Carney (Peter) and Jennifer Damiano (Mary Jane) struggle simply to be seen.
Only the bad guys, like Patrick Page's sardonic Green Goblin, or Michael Mulheren's unctuous editor, J. Jonah Jameson, really register with us.
Who is to blame for this disaster? Ultimately, the fingers must all point to director/co-author Taymor, whose vision this is and whose failure to tap into the grander myth inherent in a comic-book hero makes the whole thing so disappointing.
But it's only right that, having created one of the greatest hits of our generation in The Lion King, Taymor should now shoulder the burden of one of its greatest flops.
Call it the flying circle of life
No mention of Swiss Miss. maybe they dropped her.
Published On Sun Jan 30 2011
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark makes the beloved wall-crawler's adventures kind of dull. By Richard Ouzounian Theatre Critic NEW YORK—Let's cut to the chase.
The only truly amazing thing about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, is how unequivocally awful it is.
This $65-million musical, with its years of postponements and months of previews, lies there on the stage of the Foxwoods Theatre like the biggest beached whale in existence.
In fact, the quality of the show is so bad that the cynical part of me wonders if all the sound and fury about its technical troubles might have been nothing more than strategic cover.
Think about it. By the time you see a preview performance (as I did) that takes place without interruption, injury, or intervention from the U.N. Security Council, you might think it's such a triumph that you're willing to forget the value of the experience.
When I went to Spider-Man recently, the show had just finished two months of previews (for which the audience is paying full price), more than the normal gestation period usually allowed on Broadway. The show recently announced one more delay to its official opening night, moving it to March 15 (Ides of March, anyone?), which would mean that it will have had more than 31/2 months of previews, after months of earlier delays in even getting to that point. Only an elephant takes longer to give birth.
So most of the critical fraternity in NYC are privately letting it be known they plan to see the show over the next week and will probably be filing their notices on Feb. 8, which is the day after the opening was supposed to have taken place.
The new final flying sequence had been added on Jan. 19 and U2's Bono (co-composer of the score, along with The Edge) has let it be known that there are going to be no new songs or substantial changes to the existing ones. So why wait any longer? I bought a $140 ticket in the centre of the “Flying Circle” and went down to see the show.
With all respect to director Julie Taymor, I doubt that waiting another month, or two, or three, would have resulted in my seeing a much better product. A bit smoother, perhaps, a bit less lumpy oatmeal-like in its scenic transitions, but still the same thing that's currently onstage.
And what is that? A fairly straightforward saga about Peter Parker, his spider bite, his magic powers, his love for Mary Jane Watson and threats from the evil Green Goblin who's out to make everyone unhappy.
All of this will seem normal enough to fans of Spider-Man in the character's previous incarnations. But you might not be ready for the changes that authors Taymor and Glen Berger have added, like the character of Arachne, the evil spider-woman (didn't Chita Rivera play this already?), or the Geek chorus, adolescents who make it look like The Big Bang Theory cast have wandered into a musical and aren't sure what they're doing there.
But you don't go on a thrill ride for the narrative, you go for the dips and curves and stomach-churning thrills. That's what Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark promised to deliver. With all of its numerous cast accidents and skyrocketing budget, you'd certainly think you're going to get them.
Alas, they don't materialize.
Every now and then, a single one of Spider-Man's aerial trajectories has a breathtaking grace to it, but when any kind of sustained combat is attempted, you can see the wires, in every sense of the word. It's simply not very exciting and that's the ultimate failure of the show.
In a Broadway world where Green Day had proved in American Idiot that rock could make a musical soar, I was really looking forward to what Bono and The Edge were going to provide here. But what comes through the sound system is a kind of audio sludge, with no melodies, rhythms or lyrics standing out, except for one haunting ballad, “The Boy Falls from the Sky.”
There have been complaints about the sound system since the first preview and they don't seem to have been addressed satisfactorily. One wonders if they ever will be.
People trying to find something nice to say have turned to the set designs of George Tsypin and, as each new vista unfolds, they do have an awesome graphic-novel grandeur about them.
The trouble is that they totally dwarf the human-sized actors standing next to them, so appealing performers like Reeve Carney (Peter) and Jennifer Damiano (Mary Jane) struggle simply to be seen.
Only the bad guys, like Patrick Page's sardonic Green Goblin, or Michael Mulheren's unctuous editor, J. Jonah Jameson, really register with us.
Who is to blame for this disaster? Ultimately, the fingers must all point to director/co-author Taymor, whose vision this is and whose failure to tap into the grander myth inherent in a comic-book hero makes the whole thing so disappointing.
But it's only right that, having created one of the greatest hits of our generation in The Lion King, Taymor should now shoulder the burden of one of its greatest flops.
Call it the flying circle of life
No mention of Swiss Miss. maybe they dropped her.
__________________
It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula
It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula
