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off-the-dark-opens-after-changes-review.html
THEATER REVIEW | 'SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK'
1 Radioactive Bite, 8 Legs and 183 Previews
By Ben Brantley
June 14, 2011
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.
SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK
Music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge; book by Julie Taymor, Glen Berger and Roberto
Aguirre-Sacasa; original direction by Ms. Taymor; creative consultant, Philip William
McKinley; choreography and aerial choreography by Daniel Ezralow; additional
choreography by Chase Brock; sets by George Tsypin; lighting by Donald Holder;
costumes by Eiko Ishioka; sound by Jonathan Deans; projections by Kyle Cooper; masks
by Ms. Taymor; hair design by Campbell Young Associates/Luc Verschueren; makeup
design by Judy Chin; aerial design by Scott Rogers; aerial rigging design by Jaque
Paquin; projection coordinator/additional content design by Howard Werner;
arrangements and orchestrations by David Campbell; music supervisor, Teese Gohl;
music producer, Paul Bogaev; music direction by Kimberly Grigsby; music coordinator,
Antoine Silverman; vocal arrangements by Mr. Campbell, Mr. Gohl and Ms. Grigsby;
additional arrangements/vocal arrangements by Dawn Kenny and Rori Coleman;
production manager, Juniper Street Productions and M B Productions; general
managers, Alan Wasser, Allan Williams and Aaron Lustbader; associate producer, Anne
Tanaka; executive producers, Glenn Orsher, Stephen Howard, Martin McCallum and
Adam Silberman. Presented by Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, Land Line
Productions, Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle/Tony Adams, Sony Pictures
Entertainment, Norton Herrick and Herrick Entertainment, Billy Rovzar and Fernando
Rovzar, Stephen Bronfman, Jeffrey B. Hecktman, Omneity Entertainment/Richard G.
Weinberg, James L. Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, S2BN Entertainment, Jam
Theatricals, the Mayerson/Gould/Hauser/Tysoe Group, Patricia Lambrecht and Paul
McGuinness, by arrangement with Marvel Entertainment. At the Foxwoods Theater, 213
West 42nd Street, Manhattan; (877) 250-2929, ticketmaster.com. Running time: 2 hours
45 minutes.
WITH: Reeve Carney (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Jennifer Damiano (Mary Jane
Watson), T. V. Carpio (Arachne), Patrick Page (Norman Osborn/Green Goblin), Michael
Mulheren (J. Jonah Jameson), Ken Marks (Uncle Ben/Buttons), Isabel Keating (Mrs.
Gribrock/Aunt May/Maxie), Jeb Brown (M J’s Father/Stokes), Laura Beth Wells (Emily
Osborn), Matt Caplan (Flash/Bud), Dwayne Clark (Boyle/Robertson) and Luther Creek
(Kong/Travis).
