In the musical theater world, there is the legend of Carrie: The Musical. Yes, I said Carrie: the Musical. It was an ill-conceived piece that showed up on Broadway in the ‘80’s and didn’t make it out of previews. It left people agog, and theater queens to this day are still talking about it. Here’s a clip! Since then, theatergoers have been seeking out the next Carrie, for the lulz. Many people thought Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark was going to raise the bar for flops. That being said, what’s playing now at the Foxwoods theater isn’t a flop, and seems to have enough staying power to stick around, for better or for worse.
I didn’t have the joy of seeing the travesty that was Spiderman in the previews. From what I heard, when the actors weren’t falling to their deaths, the show was alternately confusing as hell and stupefyingly boring. Spidey 2.0 has, from what I can presume, fixed the mechanical problems, tightened the storyline, and gone from mind-numbing to simply prosaic. You probably even know the plot already. Boy gets bit by an uber-spider. Boy grows balls and decides he looks good in spandex. Boy loses balls to another man in spandex. Plot device intervenes to give boy back his balls. Boy flings doilies out of his wrist to save whiny girlfriend. Throw in some seriously weird costumes and a shitty post-lemon U2, and apparently, you have something backers want to invest in.
My biggest problem with Spiderman is that the show isn’t sure of what it wants to be. It’s campy, but without being self aware (see: Xanadu, the musical) or self assured (see: Xanadu: the movie). It constantly makes little jokes at its own expense, but then expects you to take it seriously when Peter get teased and beaten, simply for being a nerd (let’s not even talk about the horrendous “high school” language they try and use). Act one tries to be very in-your-face about this being a comic book musical. The sets try to look like panels of DC graphics, only not colored in, and once Peter gets to NYC, the citizens are all wearing very bizarre caricature masks. Act two, however, ups the ante. Suddenly, the stage is awash in color, the masks are gone, and much of what’s going on is done above the audience’s head, as Spiderman goes zooming around the theater, fighting off random villains that seem a lot weirder and more bizarre then you’d think, even with this being a comic book musical.
That being said, when the visuals are impressive, they’re really impressive. The Green Goblin and Spiderman fight above the heads of the audience, criss-crossing their lines, which basically means that the engineer had his work cut out for him to make sure that no one got hurt (too late). This also makes the people in the super cheap (comparatively) highest balcony feel that they aren’t being totally screwed since Spiderman constantly jumps off the balcony to start his swings. It takes a while for things to get really impressive, though. The first act really suffers from a lack of this “sparkle” as there’s a lot of teenage angst, people sitting around talking, and Peter bouncing around a room that keeps moving around like a kid’s bouncing castle.
Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark is not a bad musical. It’s not a good musical. It’s not boring, but it doesn’t leave any real impression. It can’t tour, but it can easily be cut down to 90 minutes and transferred to Vegas. Spiderman won’t really flop, but it’s hard to imagine that it has the staying power to sell out the 5 years that it needs to recoup its losses. Like so many Broadway shows, this will probably appeal to the “masses” and is even worth the cheaper seats, just to see the spectacle, but don’t kill yourself trying to get a ticket.
