Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark
Book by Julie Taymor, Glen Berger, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Music and Lyrics by Bono and The Edge
Directed by Philip Wm. McKinley
Original Direction by Julie Taymor
Where: Foxwoods Theater, New York, NY
When: Thursday, January 19, 7:30pm
There were such low expectations going into Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark that it really wouldn't have taken much to make me enjoy this Broadway spectacle. There was no way this much maligned, long delayed, and oft ridiculed production could be as bad as the critics were saying it was, was there?
Critics don't always know what they're talking about, but in this case, this incarnation of the Spiderman tale (essentially a scene-by-scene retelling of the first movie [showing a sheer lack of creativity] set to horribly crafted music from Bono and The Edge of U2) has been rightly lambasted. While it has some unique design elements (likely courtesy of the creative mind of Julie Taymor who was unceremoniously dethroned as director when the musical was initially bludgeoned by the press) and some highly technical and genuinely exciting flying sequences in which Spidey flies out over the audience while fighting the Green Goblin, this production is horribly laughable and if the tepid applause after every number was any indication, I was not the only one in the audience unimpressed.
Still, what will likely keep this on the Great White Way for years to come is the high-flying acrobatic work which admittedly is exhilarating to see. The audience ate that up and it ended things on quite a high note for them. However, even with that impressive technical achievement, one simply can't ignore the fact that nearly everything else in this musical is laughably bad. Look beyond the thrilling aerials and there's simply nothing there.
There is simply an abundance of problems here that I'm not quite sure where to start. Let's begin with the book. I should say that I'm no comic book expert, but the plot here is pulled almost directly from the first Spiderman flick. While that may follow very closely to the origin story of the comic book, I really didn't need to see a complete rehash of how Peter Parker became his alter ego after being bit by a genetically altered spider. I'd assume there's such a large pool of plotlines to pull from in the comic books, so did we really need Norman Osborne/Green Goblin to be our villain? Even Broadway's Mary Poppins (which I reviewed earlier this week) changes things around enough to make things stay fresh. In Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, everything reeks of staleness.
Granted, the play adds a ridiculous subplot (which was apparently much more prominent in Julie Taymor's original production before the story got rehashed by the new directing team) concerning the Greek myth of Arachne who was turned into a spider after some tiff amongst the gods. She becomes Peter's guardian angel of sorts which essentially means she's forced to hang from the rafters in some web-like contraption wailing some horribly treacly encouraging words to our hero. When Arachne made her first appearance of Act II, the eight-year-old kid behind me literally said, "Jeez, not her again," and I couldn't have agreed more.
It's certainly not just the book that's a problem. For all the acclaim and prestige U2's Bono and The Edge have in the music world, they're simply not the right fit for the Broadway stage. Yes, there are some successful moments -- the powerful and sweeping "Rise Above" occurring after Peter's uncle is killed is probably the best visual and aural moment in the production; "The Boy Falls From the Sky" is a typical, though strong, U2 rock ballad; and "If the World Should End" is a pleasant and rather lovely love ballad sung by Peter's girlfriend Mary Jane -- and admittedly the music is okay for the most part, but the lyrics for nearly everything are mind-numbingly awful. When the line was uttered, "I search through the trash for a melody // that may lead us to dignity // in this junkyard of humanity," I thought it was altogether rather fitting. The music did feel like it came right from the trashbins of U2's previous works. [It should be noted that those heinous lines I just typed actually came from one of the good songs I previously mentioned. If that's from a decent one, just imagine what the bad ones sound like.]
The musical genre is inherently a difficult one for audiences to open up to because it's not based in a bit of reality. While it's easier to embrace on a stage rather than in a movie theater, you still have to ease the audience into the production numbers. Multiple times in Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, the characters just began singing out of nowhere. Peter would say a line and Mary Jane would just start a song, lacking any instrumental intro or build up. It was just awkward and uncomfortable and felt like there was no communication or camaraderie between the book writers and the lyricists -- something that I have to believe is crucial when producing a musical. I watched an interview with Bono and The Edge in which the two said they felt no real responsibility for the initial failures of the production. They did their thing and went away from it. That in and of itself is part of the problem. The duo walking away from it all abundantly shows.
And what they have created -- with the exception of those three songs mentioned above -- is just painful. Songs like "Bullying by Numbers," "D.I.Y World," and "A Freak Like Me Needs Company" are just as bad as their titles make them sound. Anything requiring the cast to sing together was painful to listen to as the company simply couldn't ever seem to find the right notes. For instance, I have absolutely no clue what was said in "Sinistereo," a number sung by the play's quintet of reporters, which I'm guessing was supposed to relay to the audience the awful things the Green Goblin was doing around New York City, but could have easily been describing the best way to bake a cake. I literally couldn't comprehend a thing that was said. Granted, some of that fault lies in the cast's lack of enunciation (and absolutely horrible harmonizing), but a huge chunk of the problem lies in the music and lyrics.
In the end, though, it's not really the cast's fault that the production is as bad as it is. Sure, they're forced to spout awful lines and dance some of the worst hip hop choreography I've witnessed, but they do their best. Reeve Carney as Peter Parker/Spiderman is an adequate Bono impersonator -- I say that because all his ballad-heavy numbers sound as if they'd be right at home on the B-side of a U2 record. Rebecca Faulkenberry was fine as Mary Jane, but her role is so broad and lacking any real heart that it's tough to give a damn about her relationship with Peter. Stealing the show is Patrick Page's Norman Osborne/Green Goblin. As the Green Goblin, Page is given the play's corniest lines, but he is the only person in the cast that exudes any bit of a personality and is a bright spot in an otherwise disastrous production.
While Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark isn't the worst thing I've seen on Broadway (this is) -- the high-flying stunts and heretofore unmentioned impressive sets save it from that dubious honor -- it comes awfully close. If what I saw was the revamped "better" version, there's a part of me that wonders how godawful Julie Taymor's original vision was because there aren't a whole lot of ways I imagine it could it been worse.
Yes, this is the type of high-flying shenanigans you'll see. Granted, Mary Jane isn't carried around by the Halloween-masked Green Goblin, but Spidey and his arch-nemesis do fight mid-air and it is pretty nifty.
Granted, the play adds a ridiculous subplot (which was apparently much more prominent in Julie Taymor's original production before the story got rehashed by the new directing team) concerning the Greek myth of Arachne who was turned into a spider after some tiff amongst the gods. She becomes Peter's guardian angel of sorts which essentially means she's forced to hang from the rafters in some web-like contraption wailing some horribly treacly encouraging words to our hero. When Arachne made her first appearance of Act II, the eight-year-old kid behind me literally said, "Jeez, not her again," and I couldn't have agreed more.
It's certainly not just the book that's a problem. For all the acclaim and prestige U2's Bono and The Edge have in the music world, they're simply not the right fit for the Broadway stage. Yes, there are some successful moments -- the powerful and sweeping "Rise Above" occurring after Peter's uncle is killed is probably the best visual and aural moment in the production; "The Boy Falls From the Sky" is a typical, though strong, U2 rock ballad; and "If the World Should End" is a pleasant and rather lovely love ballad sung by Peter's girlfriend Mary Jane -- and admittedly the music is okay for the most part, but the lyrics for nearly everything are mind-numbingly awful. When the line was uttered, "I search through the trash for a melody // that may lead us to dignity // in this junkyard of humanity," I thought it was altogether rather fitting. The music did feel like it came right from the trashbins of U2's previous works. [It should be noted that those heinous lines I just typed actually came from one of the good songs I previously mentioned. If that's from a decent one, just imagine what the bad ones sound like.]
The musical genre is inherently a difficult one for audiences to open up to because it's not based in a bit of reality. While it's easier to embrace on a stage rather than in a movie theater, you still have to ease the audience into the production numbers. Multiple times in Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, the characters just began singing out of nowhere. Peter would say a line and Mary Jane would just start a song, lacking any instrumental intro or build up. It was just awkward and uncomfortable and felt like there was no communication or camaraderie between the book writers and the lyricists -- something that I have to believe is crucial when producing a musical. I watched an interview with Bono and The Edge in which the two said they felt no real responsibility for the initial failures of the production. They did their thing and went away from it. That in and of itself is part of the problem. The duo walking away from it all abundantly shows.
And what they have created -- with the exception of those three songs mentioned above -- is just painful. Songs like "Bullying by Numbers," "D.I.Y World," and "A Freak Like Me Needs Company" are just as bad as their titles make them sound. Anything requiring the cast to sing together was painful to listen to as the company simply couldn't ever seem to find the right notes. For instance, I have absolutely no clue what was said in "Sinistereo," a number sung by the play's quintet of reporters, which I'm guessing was supposed to relay to the audience the awful things the Green Goblin was doing around New York City, but could have easily been describing the best way to bake a cake. I literally couldn't comprehend a thing that was said. Granted, some of that fault lies in the cast's lack of enunciation (and absolutely horrible harmonizing), but a huge chunk of the problem lies in the music and lyrics.
In the end, though, it's not really the cast's fault that the production is as bad as it is. Sure, they're forced to spout awful lines and dance some of the worst hip hop choreography I've witnessed, but they do their best. Reeve Carney as Peter Parker/Spiderman is an adequate Bono impersonator -- I say that because all his ballad-heavy numbers sound as if they'd be right at home on the B-side of a U2 record. Rebecca Faulkenberry was fine as Mary Jane, but her role is so broad and lacking any real heart that it's tough to give a damn about her relationship with Peter. Stealing the show is Patrick Page's Norman Osborne/Green Goblin. As the Green Goblin, Page is given the play's corniest lines, but he is the only person in the cast that exudes any bit of a personality and is a bright spot in an otherwise disastrous production.
While Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark isn't the worst thing I've seen on Broadway (this is) -- the high-flying stunts and heretofore unmentioned impressive sets save it from that dubious honor -- it comes awfully close. If what I saw was the revamped "better" version, there's a part of me that wonders how godawful Julie Taymor's original vision was because there aren't a whole lot of ways I imagine it could it been worse.
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