Monday Review: Spider-Man Reboo...t!

Damn! So close to a rhyming title.

So last May I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark with my friend Kullan on its second day of new previews, fresh off its month-long, completely-reworking-everything-after-being-universally-panned-and-hemorrhaging-millions hiatus. I imagine if this was the first time I saw the show, I would have found it pretty mediocre. But I had the dubious privilege of seeing the show pre-boot, and Jesus. Fucking. Christ. THERE IS SO MUCH IMPROVEMENT! Seeing Spidey 2.0 after witnessing the Taymor trainwreck is such an experience. The latter was the worst show in the history of Broadway; the former may not be great, maybe not even good, but it's far from the worst thing on Broadway THIS SEASON.

If you can't appreciate that degree of improvement on such a complicated production in a one month time span, then there is something wrong with you on a fundamental level. You should reevaluate your life.



So what's so different? Well the biggest thing is that former Turn Off the Dark mastermind Julie Taymor was completely dropped from the show, and with it her...umm, unique...vision of webhead, his mythology, and the larger nature of the musical theatre experience. With Taymor out of the picture, the story could molded be into something more recognizably Spider-Man. That insufferable Geek Chorus is gone, and Arachne - Taymor's authorial avatar and the big bad of Spidey 1.0 - is reduced to little more than a glorified cameo.

The book, resuscitated by comics veteran and celebrated playwright - that rare breed! - Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, is finally coherent. Sacasa removed the Arachne subplot that dominated the show's second act, instead opting to lengthen the more-or-less unrelated story of the first into the show's entirety. Gone are her eight-legged furies and her maniacal quest to steal shoes better than MJ's (...I, uh, I think that's what was in the old version. I'm still trying to work out what the hell was going on). Sacasa's plot is considerably more streamlined, cohesive, and rewarding to the audience; Sacasa gives Spidey and the Green Goblin much-needed breathing space to develop. In Taymor's crammed book, the first act ended with Gobby's death; in the new version, it ends with his origin.

Many of the songs were reworked, some were cut, and a new one was added: "A Freak Like Me Needs Company." It's an 80s-style dance-romp pastiche at the beginning of Act II, and probably the best song in the whole damn show. "I'm a 65 million dollar circus tragedy -- well maybe more like 75 million!" Osborn sneers as he mutates his two-faced colleagues in the same accident that birthed his villainous alter ego. It's a clever way to introduce the Sinister Six, who before were created on the half-baked whims of the Geek Chorus. God what a fucking lazy narrative device.

For what it's worth, I chuckled at the self-reference, too. Meta is handled pretty sloppily in musical theatre these days, so I appreciate when it can elicit an emotion other than facepalm.



The best part about Sacasa's new song is that, unlike the Bono-penned tunes in the rest of the show, "A Freak Like Me" actually advances the plot, which is kind of what a song in a musical is supposed to do. And speaking of the insufferable Irishman, you'll all be happy to know that "Vertigo" was removed from the club scene, replaced by generic untz-untz rave music. Unfortunately, "Bullying By Numbers" remains. Ears bled. I just wish "bullying by numbers" was an actual phrase so the song would at least make a nugget of fucking sense.

A number of other additions and changes were made to the production. True Believers will be happy to know that, through the magic of prerecorded lines blasted through speakers (TRULY WE ARE IN THE FUTURE), Spider-Man now cracks jokes as he swings through the Foxwoods Theater. I squealed at that a bit, not gonna lie. Also that scene early in Act I where Peter's home life - where he whines and angsts because he gets bullied at school and his parents who aren't his actual parents just don't know what it's like to be a teenager, maaaan - is juxtaposed with Mary Jane's - where she's verbally and physically abused by her alcoholic father - is made a little less appallingly awful. Now the father is a drunk of the sad, pathetic, harmless variety, the kind you simultaneously pity and root for. In other words, Tony Stark circa 1979. COME ON MJ'S DAD YOU CAN GET OFFA THE STUFF IF YOU JUST TRY. Anyway the implication that Peter and Mary Jane's lives are equally tragic works a bit better. A bit.

Of course, Turn Off the Dark is not without its problems, namely its inability to completely reconcile the new, less fantastical narrative with Taymor's astronomically expensive vision. This was inevitable; they spent all that fucking money creating vaguely racist masks, blow-up doll Bonesaws and LED screens for shitty Sinister Six music videos, of course they can't afford to scrap any of that stuff. Sacasa does the best he - or anyone, I imagine - can integrating all the overpriced incoherence into the story, but the dissonance is jarring. Arachne is the most obvious casualty; there's really no reason for the character to remain in the show, besides her spider suit probably costing a few hundred thousand dollars. As a "guardian angel" that confers with Peter in two dream sequences, the role serves little purpose, existing only to belt out "Rise Above" and for some cool Cirque du Soleil stuff (itself another out-of-place Taymor remnant irrelevant to the plot) at the beginning of the musical. I almost wish Arachne had more stage time, if only to better integrate her into the story. Y'know, give her a reason to be in that list of characters or something.



One final thing I noticed was that Sacasa's book contains a lot more insider references to life in New York City, which is another really interesting and well done metafictional element to Spidey 2.0. The show has, after all, become part and particle of the city, the talk of the town in virtually every circle. Turn Off the Dark reached fruition during my first year living in Manhattan, and the notorious production was always in the headlines, always THE topic of conversation. This "65 million dollar circus tragedy" may have had a much larger influence on NYC than people currently acknowledge, one that may have lasting effects on its culture, economy, and society. Only time will tell.

God I can't wait to leave boring, touristy D.C. and get back there. I'll be able to bow my head in embarrassment as I admit to all my elitist drama major friends that I kinda liked how Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark 2.0 turned out.

And Reeve Carney still rocks that ballin' Spider-Man jacket. In these trying times that's all anyone can really ask for.

...He's Probably Just Like Me: A Mother. F***ing. Goblin.

Excuse the title, I've been getting into Tyler a lot lately. Just like every suburban white kid.

Well it has been a while, hasn’t it? Schoolwork and women and a few nasty medical issues have kept me away from here – life likes to throw wrenches in our routines with crazy stuff like that. The other blogger on here is just super lazy and spends his time drunk go-karting in drag at weddings. Oh Gabriel, you and your antics. But that’s a story for another time, and I pwomise I’ll be posting more often in the coming months. Now I swore to myself that I would stop with these damn Spidey villain posts, I'm just so tired of them. But this one, this one I had to bang out -- it was born out of necessity. NECESSITY!! And besides, why not cap these off with a post on web-head's baddest baddie?*

*Personally I always thought Doc Ock was a better candidate for archenemy status. Stan agrees with me, so yeah. But, y'know, whatevs...

So here's how it all started: a couple months ago my friend Dom and I were watching the first Spider-Man movie with his buddies Tim and Seth. Right around the part where Willem Dafoe croaks out "Back to formula?", Dom turns to me and asks: “So what's Green Goblin’s deal, what makes him so significant as a Spider-Man villain? What makes him the archenemy?”

Good. Question.

A lot of the true believers have a really tough time with the Green Goblin. On one hand, he's supposedly the web-slinger's greatest nemesis. No other foe has made such an indelible mark on the mythos, has caused our hero so much grief and torment. On the other hand, he's so out of place with the rest of the rogues. He's a total anomaly; not a consciously boisterous showman, not a team player like the guys in the Sinister Six, not an animal-themed totem or a symbiote Doppelgänger - nothing about him syncs up. Worse still, Gobby simply seems to lack any deeper thematic significance, possessing none of those weighty opposites or parallels that drive the best superhero-villain relationships. He just doesn't appear to riff off of any aspects of Peter/Spidey in the way that a great supervillain, archenemy or not, should. Better men than I have tried to wrassle with GG with a good deal of success (here and here, you guys should read 'em and stuff), but every analysis I've come across can't help but fall a bit flat against the sheer enormity of the spider-goblin rivalry. It can't all come from the soap operatics and father-figure underpinnings - from the initial mystery of his identity, his personal connection to Peter and Harry, and the Night Gwen Stacy Died. There's got to be something about Osborn and his demon at the conceptual level that appeals to people, right?

Don't worry, there is! There is in spades!! And once we dig it out, you'll totally understand why this guy is Spider-Man's one true nemesis in the eyes of most fans.

But first, digression! So in one of my drama classes this year, Voice & Speech, we all had to recite a Shakespearean sonnet. One of the shier students was rehearsing hers for our teacher in front of the group, and to get her to project better the teacher asked her to sing the sonnet. This backfired rather ingloriously: the student’s voice began to diminish and waver with hesitation. She became apprehensive, started to choke up. The teacher kept pushing her and pushing her until eventually she broke down and started to cry – as we were all soon to discover in the coming moments, this girl was super self-conscious about her singing voice. So much so, in fact, that the whole ordeal was like a nightmare come to life for her. The class necessarily turned into a group therapy session, with the teacher taking the reigns: “We all have that voice in the back of our heads that just wants to get us down sometimes, and it can be hard. I have it too: 'Your boobs are too small.' 'You're getting old, getting ugly wrinkles on your face.' 'You're not a good actress.' But you know what? It's not helpful at all, and it's just plain wrong, so you've just got to find that little bastard telling you 'you're a bad singer' and tune it out. Get that goblin out of your head.”

“Get that goblin out of your head.”

That, that right there is what Osborn’s monster is all about.

You know those quirky indie dramadies where the protagonist’s insecurities manifest as physical people he can have a dialogue with? The Green Goblin is that for Peter. He’s the personification of all Peter’s nagging self-doubt, the voice in his head from where all his inner anxiety arises. We all have it to varying degrees, telling us there is something fundamentally wrong with your body or personality or thought process, etc. that makes you undesirable, inadequate, worthless, inferior.

And until you stop trying to fight it, that voice says, I’ll always be here, in the back of your head, to remind you again and again and again. Just when life seems to be getting good, I’ll be there to tell you all the reasons to hate yourself. I’ll be there to destroy everything you love and make your life miserable.

I’ll be there to drop your true love off a bridge and turn your best friend into a schizo suicidal junkie. Oh, and the Clone Saga, that too. Everybody lost out with that one.

Of course, while those guys in the movies are figments of some paranoid schmuck’s imagination, Gobby is a living, flesh-and-blood proxy, so he takes on a much more threatening antagonistic role. On the elevated plane of superheroics, where big ideas duke it out in the streets of Metropolis or Gotham, the inner conflict becomes externalized – the fight in Peter’s psyche is literalized into a physical brawl between two entities. That’s probably why GG won’t stay dead; you can triumph over your inner demons, but you can never quite get rid of them entirely.

Maybe that’s because they can be so damn tempting sometimes. The same voice that points out your perceived faults and misfortunes also has a habit of demanding retribution for them. To make others pay for the unfairness, the injustice of it all. It’s a bad emotional place that’s all too appealing to go to, encompassing jealousy, envy, anger towards the ex that cheated on or dumped you, resentment towards the bully that emasculates you, etc. etc. All that nasty Columbine-fuel.

Too soon? Too soon…

As you might expect, GG also embodies this aspect of Peter’s inner life. And so here, for context's sake, we find a relation between web-head's two most essential foes: if Doctor Octopus is what Spidey will become if he compromises his principles and succumbs to his own heaping angst, the Green Goblin is the voice in Spidey’s head telling him to do just that. He whispers into Peter’s ears: there’s always a way out, a way to free yourself and vent all your self-loathing away. Give up the good fight, don’t try to go against the tide of a cruel, apathetic world. Surrender to your frustration, your bitterness – let life make a cynic out of you. Lash out! It’s liberating! Just ask Norman, he’s so much better now…

And how does Norman factor into all this? It’s important to remember that Osborn was a nasty guy even before the accident, but he was motivated by a profound sense (more accurately misunderstanding) of responsibility. Like the rest of us, Norm had a goblin in his head too, reminding him over and over again of the enormous responsibilities he had - to his corporation, his thousands of employees, his clients, his son - all of which he was failing to meet. A mid-life crisis didn't do him any favors, either. So the pressure got to him and the voice in his head started calling the shots. When that serum exploded in his face and messed up his mind, his inner goblin took complete control...but not in the way it usually goes down. He didn’t succumb to it, a la Doc Ock with his never-ending insecurities, so much as he actually became it. And through this almost shamanistic process, he learned something: with great power comes freedom from responsibility!

So Gobbs puts on a crazy costume befitting his nature, and just like that he's a boogeyman straight out of some neurotic loser's nightmares, an embodiment of all his fears and doubts and emotional/psychological baggage. Problem is, GG doesn't have that neurotic loser to torment yet. But from the start he knows Spider-Man is the one. I mean look no further than the Goblin's debut in Amazing Spider-Man #14, where he tracks Spidey down and proposes that the two of them star in a Hollywood blockbuster together...which Spider-Man accepts!! It's so ridiculous, I love it. God those comics are fucking great. Their connection borders on supernatural or predestination, like that other great superhero rivalry. One simply can't exist without the other.



There's a concept that describes the relationship between the Green Goblin and our hero perfectly: duende. It's a term coined by Federico Garcia Lorca, borrowed from the mythical goblins (OH HO SEE WHUT I DID THAR) of Spanish/Latin American folklore. He describes duende as a mysterious, inexplicable force that arises from within us as a raw physical and emotional response. The kind of idea invoked by a Movement Techniques teacher when she wants you to do weird abstract performance art stuff (no one said drama majors take real classes). In Lorca's context, the duende is a demonic spirit who allows an artist to see the limitations of rationality. It brings the artist face-to-face with death and pure emotional experience, all to help him produce truly great art. The artist does not simply surrender to duende, however, but skillfully battles it in hand-to-hand combat; through this process the art is created (all of this has been ripped pretty shamelessly from In Search of Duende, if anyone's interested). Replace duende with Gobbs and the artist with Spidey and you've got some seriously meta shit going on there.

Duende actually popped up in Batman Inc. #3 last March, where Bruce Wayne described it more generally as "the fierce lust for life when we feel and express when we know death is near." Among the elements that comprise duende are irrationality, diabolicalness and a heightened awareness of death...all of which also describe Gobby pretty well, don't they? He's certainly diabolical, and anybody who rides on a glider like that without a goddamn helmet has the death drive thing down. He's obviously irrational, too - we're talking about a guy who spends his nights in a lab building grenades that look like pumpkins, like actually taking the time to make sure they look like pumpkins. What kind of fucking freak does that?

Maybe the kind who spends his nights in his foster parents' basement building wrist-mounted devices to shoot high-tensile silly string? (Don't even get me started on that organic webbing bullshit) Spider-Man was a hero conceived with a deliberately icky edge, and most of Spidey's rogues are extensions of his murkier dimensions, extensions which must at least potentially exist deep within Pete's psyche. Like a corrupt, malicious version of duende the Green Goblin wants to bring all that darkness out, which is why he brings Peter face-to-face with irrationality and diabolicalness and death. Ever since his first appearance in Amazing #14, where Ditko drew the Goblin as a carnivalesque monster, his cartoonish features grotesquely incongruous with the sickly realism that informed the rest of the art. Ever since his master plan in Amazing #39 which, as simple as it was, to this day remains one of the most demoniac in supervillain history. Ever since his apparent demise in Amazing #122, when Gwen Stacy snapped her neck and everything changed forever.

I imagine the Green Goblin finds this renewed-self-confidence-nobody-dies phase going on in Peter's life right now to be so adorably quaint. You can bet that he'll be the one to end it. Sometimes just when you think you've conquered your demons, they come back stronger than ever before.

Tune in next time for a review of the revamped Spidey musical, fresh off its month-long hiatus. Guess what guys, it's not that bad anymore! I mean, it's not great, I'd hesitate before even calling it good, but it's a far, far cry from the shitshow trainwreck I saw in February. Hooray!!

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