Times to Spider-Man :: Turn off the show

This morning many readers of the New York Times woke to an unexpected treat - Ben Brantley's review of the long-awaited Spider-Man Turn of the Dark. The musical wasn't scheduled to be officially reviewed until March 15, 2011-- the third or is it the fourth pushed back date - but the editors at the Times decided the time had come for Spider-Man to meet Brantley - its most nefarious foe to date - to attempt to turn off the dark once and for all.

And he tries very hard to do so.

His review begins by describing an incident when it appears a small technical glitch brought the production to a halt. This being its 65th performance can only lead one to think such occurrences are part of the daily routine. The actors - Patrick Page who plays the Green Goblin and Reeve Carvey who plays Spider-Man came to halt, leading the energetic (by Brantley's account) Page to ad-lib: "You gotta be careful. You're gonna fly over the heads of the audience, you know. I hear they dropped a few of them."

The audience erupted.

"'Roar,' went the audience," wrote Brantley, "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."

The crack and the audience's response to it oddly reflected the advice Joan Rivers gave Spider-Man director Julie Taymor when she saw the show last week (also reported in the Sunday Times): "Hire a stunt person to fall on someone every three or four weeks - that'll keep audiences showing up."

The thrust of the Sunday Times story was how Spider-Man has become a national joke.

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Brantley's review confirms its status as a Broadway disaster on par with Carrie, Dance of the Vampires and Moose Murders.

"This production should play up regularly and resonantly the promise that things could go wrong," he continued. "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."

He goes on to justify the Times decision to cover the show some five weeks before its official opening saying that they felt it was fine to cover the show as close to Monday - its previously announced opening - as possible.

"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."

He describes the experience as "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.)"

And even takes issue with the stunts. "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."

He further derides the production as looking cheap: "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,'..."

"For a story that has also inspired hit action movies, it is remarkably static in this telling."

As for the score, he concludes: "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.'

Whether this review will put a stake in Spider-Man's heart remains to be seen. The producers have been utilizing celebrity endorsements (Glenn Beck has seen it four times!) and tweets to spread the word as to how much fun the show is. Nothing has appeared to faze its box office appeal. Next to Wicked it has become Broadway's highest grossing show and that without much paid advertising or marketing. The show itself is marketing itself. While other shows have survived a bad review from the Times (Wicked's was far from a rave), this one may test the power of the critic against a theme park musical with a fan base that spreads its word through social media. Perhaps it will mark the audience turned off the critics.