Spider-Man's Tangled Web...The Musical!

Beware, this be a long one.

So I went to see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark the other day. Waited an hour in 17-degree weather to get $30 tickets. Now every time I look in the mirror I ask myself whether it was worth it. Oh who am I kidding, of course it was, but in the same way that I thought Avatar in 3-D IMAX was worth shelling out $15 to see – I’m glad I involved myself in a pop-culture phenomenon that everyone is talking about.

I knew that Turn Off the Dark was going to be bad going in to it – I mean, really, how could it possibly not be? – but I expected it to be bad in the best, most enjoyable way, the way where bad is just as valid as good. I sauntered into the Foxwoods Theatre (someone should tell them that the –re ending is supposed to be used for the art form, not the venue) assuming the experience would be akin to reading a Silver Age comic: inanely stupid, yes, but so full of wonder and excitement and spectacle and out-there imagination and WHOA LOOK AT THOSE STUNTS and HOLY SHIT IT’S SPIDEY ON BROADWAY that I would be floored, overwhelmed with some kind of weird, cathartic ectoplasm of amazing childhood giddy-glee.

Good God was I disappointed, because this show was just bad. Not so bad it’s good. Not bad but entertaining. Not bad but that’s okay because BIFF! POW! it’s Spider-Man on Broadway.

Just bad.

As both a Spider-Man fan and a drama major studying in Manhattan, it’s very hard for me to look at this production objectively; there is so much in both departments that is horribly wrong. But seeing as A) this is a comics blog and B) the whole drama angle is kind of an important thing

to get right in a Broadway show anyway, I’m going to throw any pretentions of objectivity out the window right now. THERE. IT HAS BEEN DONE.

I suppose that the biggest problem with the show is that its

biggest draw, the spectacle (or is it really the suspense, the possibility of witnessing an accident occur?), is far from spectacular. It’s Cirque du Soleil-lite, to be frank. With the exception of three amazing sequences – the telling of Arachne’s origin at the show’s beginning, the scene where Spidey’s powers first manifest, and the well-orchestrated Act I finale – the stunts and aerial acrobatics are beyond underwhelming. The novelty of it all wears off fast; by a quarter-way through the first act my nerdy enthusiasm and excitement had turned into indifferent, slightly bored bemusement. The saddest thing is that so many opportunities for amazing visuals went unrealized – there is a long scene where reporters at the Daily Bugle describe an epic offstage fight going on between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Wouldn’t it be interesting to actually see that fight in mid-air before our eyes instead of having to wade through a sea of exposition? I thought that was kind of the point of the show…or at least its $65 million price tag.

The story itself is a complete mess. The narrative is framed by a Geek Chorus (HUR DUR GET IT?) trying to craft the ultimate Spidey fan-fiction. It’s a concept rife with metafictional possibilities that are more-or-less left completely untouched. The quartet (Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Mat Devine, and Alice Lee) doesn’t even function as a classical Greek Chorus – their constant freezing of time and fanboy interjections only detract from the story. The thing is – as anyone who has been accosted by one in a comic book store knows all too well – true fanboys (note the difference from fans) are a goddamn insufferable, obnoxious bunch, the ultra-annoying bottom-feeders of geekery. If we can’t stand them talking in real life, how are we supposed to in the theatre?

They also suck at writing fan-fiction: the entire first act is ripped, sometimes word-for-word, straight from the first Spider-Man film. Knowing exactly what will happen down to the scene causes the musical, an experience predicated on a spirit of innovative newness, to become extremely tedious. Act I is a predictable chore to get through, not relieved in the least by Bono and the Edge’s at best forgettable soundtrack.

There are a number of weird, small deviations from the first film’s plot – Doctor Octopus’s sympathetic origin from Spider-Man 2 is grafted onto Norman Osborn’s in a strange attempt to make him a tragic villain, for example (there’s no Harry in the musical, which is off-putting). The gesture is a hackneyed attempt at complexity and undermines what the Green Goblin is supposed to embody in the first place; Osborn’s story is, at it’s core, that of a bad man who becomes worse, a man who misunderstands the nature of responsibility and, in doing so, inevitably abandons it entirely.

That sort of thing is the real problem with the Spider-Man musical: it couldn’t care less about Spider-Man or his mythos. Spidey, both in terms of the individual character and the larger essence of his story, is an afterthought in the show. Librettist/director Julie Taymor (best-known for the Tony Award-winning adaptation The Lion King as well as the Academy Award-nominated Across the Universe and Frida) and composers Bono and the Edge display a complete lack of understanding – or passing interest – in what Spider-Man is actually about. In trying to justify the nonsensical title, Taymor stated, “The one thing that Spider-Man is about is trying to bring a certain kind of light back into a world that is full of darkness.”

I mean, I guess, but Christ isn’t that what every damn superhero is about? How is that unique to Spider-Man? Is that even what the Spider-Man mythos is supposed to represent?

It’s quite clear that no one involved in the creation of this musical consulted the Spider-Man comics, or have ever even actually read one in the first place – perhaps why everything in the musical is taken either from the film franchise or classical mythology. The only character Taymor seems to have any interest in is Arachne, the expert weaver-turned-first spider of Greek myth. It is more her story than Spider-Man’s – I think Arachne actually spends more time on stage than he does – and their mystical connection feels uncomfortably forced.

The desire to connect comic books, historically associated with juvenility, with the academic/artistic legitimacy of mythology is an understandable one: superheroes are the mythology of the United States, after all. But as true as this statement is, it’s also a compromisingly obvious, greatly limited understanding of the comic book superhero’s true potential as art and literature.

The second act, which adapts the “Spider-Man No More” plot that heavily influenced Spider-Man 2, is more freed from the strict plotline constraints of the first. Too bad that it makes absolutely no sense. This is the point where Arachne really enters the picture, and accommodating such an out-of-place character’s connection to our protagonist takes a strenuous toll on the story’s coherence. It’s also where the “turn off the dark” in the title, a phrase from a story Bono recalled of a young child trying to tell his mother to turn the lights on, is forced into the storyline. The two unravel what little structure and sense the narrative had left, and the resulting plot is all very un-Spider-Man. But at least the Geek Chorus stops budding in after a while – I assume they can’t make sense of what’s going on either.

Although the acrobatic fight choreography and aerial stunts are mostly duds (or at least egregiously overhyped), everything you’ve heard about how the set design is brilliant is right on the money. Taymor’s mind-blowing pop-up rendering of Spidey’s environment is nothing short of masterful. The first act’s engrossing settings are a cross between German expressionism, 60s pop art, and Fellini surrealism, where perspectives and perceptions are constantly, dramatically altered at a moment’s notice (in one scene, Spider-Man and the Green Goblin fight at the top of the Chrysler Building, which jets out into the audience as the stage’s back wall becomes the vibrant Manhattan streets stories below). I can’t do it justice in words alone, it’s truly something that has to be experienced firsthand.

The second act’s set consists mainly of giant, column-like LED screens in the background, which project multimedia visuals throughout the act. It has a few cool tricks up its sleeve, but overall it’s a disappointing follow-up to the ornate pop-up cityscape that drew us into the previous act.

The costume design is pure Julie Taymor – lots of exaggerated Noh gestures under big, blocky, papier-mâché-y costumes and stylized masks. Taymor is aiming for a comic book aesthetic, but the result is wildly at odds with anything related to Spider-Man or any recognizable superhero comic. The Green Goblin looks like a mutant drag queen, while the Sinister Six and the petty gangsters of New York City appear to be life-size Lego people.

The cast is hit-or-miss. Reeve Carney is serviceable as Peter Parker, it’s a pity his fantastic voice is wasted on such poorly-written music. Also he wears this abso-fuckin’-lutely ballin’ Spidey jacket towards the end of the show. I WANT IT! Jennifer Damiano is a forgettable Mary Jane Watson, though her Girl Friday-meets-Damsel in Distress role doesn’t exactly give Damiano much to work with. Patrick Page, one of the show’s delights, takes Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin into wildly inventive territory; he interprets Osborn, recast as an environmentalist genetics researcher, as a mad Ted Turner, instilling the character with Kramer-esque eccentricities and a wonderfully over-the-top Southern drawl. The play’s best moments occur when Page breaks from the (ostensibly) tragic villain schtick and taps into the unrestrained, viciously sardonic glee the Green Goblin is meant to have. TV Carpio also shines as Arachne, the most complex character in the musical. It’s clear Taymor put great effort into crafting Spider-Man’s supernatural patron, perhaps even basing the Godlike artist on herself. Carpio instills the character with intrigue and a mythic majesty, while her powerful, riffing voice makes something interesting out of even the worst of Bono and the Edge’s half-baked musical collaborations. Of course her character still doesn’t make any damn sense, but whatever.

The biggest disappointment in the cast is Michael Mulheren as J. Jonah Jameson, who spends the entire musical looking and acting like he has something better to do than try to salvage this national joke of a show. The musical's drunken momentum dies as soon as a line comes out of his mouth. To Mulheren’s defense, Taymor does next to nothing with the rich character; he doesn’t even get to be part of a song. I was hoping he would at least have a sweet riff on getting pictures of Julia Roberts in a thong (which, 9 years later, is kind of a nasty prospect).

Also Bono inserted "Vertigo" into a party scene. Shameless self-promotion, much? JEEZ!

And for all the hype about Swiss Miss, the new villain created for the musical, she barely even appears. I have no idea why they bothered creating her in the first place.

Finally (THANK GOD), I was disappointed that no one fell. Let’s be real, that’s the main reason people are coming. I was hoping Reeve Carney would land in my lap so I could snag his Spidey mask. The only technical difficulty was at the very end of the show! WHAT A RIP-OFF, AMIRITE?!

TL;DR I'm going to write a better Spider-Man musical. I got the libretto down, gonna need a composer for the music and lyrics though. Preferably someone who has made a decent song in the last twenty years.
God this is a sloppy post. I need an editor. SO MANY DIGRESSIONS