Okay, let's see. Contusions, sub-concussive head injuries, broken wrists, broken ribs, and internal bleeding--I guess they're having some technical difficulties over at The Foxwoods Theater.
Let's just say that Spiderman is having far bigger than technical problems. The whole thing is so jaw-droppingly bad it is mystifying. The book goes so wrong it's hard to even know what to say (why did they change it at all?). And the score just doesn't fit the show it was written for. The whole thing is a hot mess. When the curtain came down for intermission my daughter turned to me, her face seemed to have gone numb, "They gotta get somebody in here" she said.
But who are they going to get? Nobody is going to fix a Julie Taymor production. As they say--not gonna happen. You get a huge talent like that and they are not typically open to a whole lot of "constructive criticism.".
I need to say this: I am a huge Julie Taymor fan. I remember hearing she had been given the job directing The Lion King and thinking what a stroke of genius Disney had. Her daring artistry transformed what would likely have been a bland commercial production into something else: an immensely enjoyable and accessible work of art.
The opening scene of The Lion King can still bring about that joyful breeze up my spine in the remembering. The residents of the jungle arriving down the aisle to Elton John's soaring score heralded the arrival of a genuinely new experience. And the puppets. Oh my god, the puppets. Had you ever seen anything like them before? I certainly hadn't.
So, when I heard she was doing Spiderman, with music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge, I simply couldn't wait. What magic this time? What new realm of the imagination this go-round? I held my breath. Alan Cumming signed on. Evan Rachel Wood would be MaryJane. All kinds of happy speculation about who would be Spidey.
Then we heard. First the production costs: scheduled at $20 million (already the most expensive Broadway production in history) began heading skyward: $30M? $40M? Could become $50 million? Well, no. How about a $65 million Broadway musical, a money-devouring juggernaut. Ok, so they would need to sell out The Foxwoods for three years, every night at full price, to recoup the investment. That had happened, Julie had done that with The Lion King; Wicked makes it look like child's play. But no one in their right mind has ever even come close to spending on a stage production the kind of phenomenal amounts spent on movies with worldwide reach.
Now we heard it wasn't even good. Oh, dear. Oh, the schadenfaude. Michael Reidel, in the Post, could not contain himself--he was giddy with predictions of doom. But I don't know--it's Julie Taymor for god's sake. It must be better than they say.
It isn't. Ok, the sets are great. The lighting superb. And the flying is pretty darn cool. There's a scene with giant puppet heads and giant comic-style sets that is completely thrilling. In fact, I would say that the mise en scene is one of the best I've ever seen. In the service of nearly nothing.
Just a few notes about things. There is a kind of Greek chorus of comics-loving teens that set the scenes. It doesn't work. Peter Parker is played as a complete nebbish rather than the stifled, repressed font of possibility he is. It doesn't work. The goddess Arachne hovers over the proceedings in completely unintelligible ways. When I saw it, in the third week of previews, the whole thing worked so poorly that the lead producer came out before the opening to tell us they were trying a new ending tonight. What? Three weeks into previews of the most expensive production ever and they were trying out a new ending?? It didn't work.
Oh, well. Life upon the wicked stage.
Ron Gallen
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