'Spider-Man' Musical as Beleaguered as its Title Character

Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark certainly has the essence of its beleaguered hero down.

According to a spokesperson from the New York State Department of Labor, the show’s director, Julie Taymor (The Lion King), and the producers were unable to show the department all of the show’s two dozen aerial stunts. The department is required to view all of the stunts before approving the show and allowing the curtain to finally rise on this troubled production.  News broke last week that one of the show’s stunts was allegedly responsible for the injuries of two of the show’s actors.

Today news has surfaced that the show is again being delayed, and it isn’t only because of the numerous stunts which have still not been fully realized.

From the New York Times:

The executives, as well as people working on or plugged into the production, described a tremendous amount of creative commotion behind the scenes in interviews this week. Flying sequences were still being developed and the music, special effects and scenes of plot and dialogue were still largely in separate pieces even though performances were originally set to begin on Nov. 14.

The $60 million Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is expected to open in January, instead of its intended December 21^st date.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Readers

By Don M. Ventura

It isn’t fair to judge something that you haven’t experienced yet. But I won’t let that stop me.

In two months the massively over-budget Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, directed by Julie Taymor with music by Bono and the Edge, will finally open at the Foxwoods Theater for theatergoers interested in viewing it and buying drinks during its intermission.

From the start, nothing seemed appealing about the idea of a Spider-Man musical. Then came the first pictures of the Green Goblin and the latest to villain terrorize New York City: Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark… I mean, Swiss Miss. Now my opinion has been cemented.



Director Julie Taymor explains her passion in bringing Spidey to the Great White Way:
“I did my due diligence and read hundreds of comic books and thought about the idea of how do you bring Spider-Man, which is 40 years of extraordinary comic books, one villain after another after another after another after another… exploits that take him all over the world and into different galaxies of the mind… the real world, the astral plane, the dream world and I really was trying to think… how do we take this and bring it into a two or two and a half hour evening and try to encompass these forty years of comic books.”

I don’t share her enthusiasm about bringing our world-traveling, astral plane-swinging, wall-crawling crime fighter to the stage. Which issues did Marvel send her?

Think about it this way: Broadway is simply turning out another musical that fans of comic books have no interest in.

For more information about Spider-Man: Turn Out the Dark go to:
http://spidermanonbroadway.marvel.com/app/webroot/theatre/?gclid=CLKVhdTOiKQCFSFVgwod6E3ZIA

Or call Ticketmaster at (877) 250-2929.

Excelsior!