"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" - A Review

Sydney M. Williams
February 7, 2011

“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”

Nobody fell on Friday night. That shouldn’t be news, except that four actors have been injured on the set of Spider-Man since previews began on November 28. Before the curtain went up, we were informed that there might be delays or stoppages. There were none. But on Sunday there were two such instnaces – once when the Green Goblin was suspended for a few minutes, dangling from a wire over the audience in the orchestra; the second a minor technical problem with sound. The official opening was supposed to be on the 7th, but has been pushed back five weeks until Tuesday, March 15. 

The show has been lampooned (The Onion) and spoofed (Conan O’Brien) and graced the cover of The New Yorker (four spider-men, bandaged and in bed in a hospital ward,) yet people flock to the Foxwoods Theatre, the only one on Broadway large enough to accommodate the acrobatic stunts. Perhaps they come because they want to see an accident. (Joan Rivers, according to a piece in Saturday’s New York Times, told director, Julie Taymor – “The Lion King” – “Hire a stunt person to fall on someone every three or four weeks – that’ll keep audiences showing up.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/theater/06spider.html?_r=1&ref=patrickdhealy. My guess is they come become of the originality of the show and the excitement of the stunts.

As one who could not wait for the official opening so bought his own ticket, Charles Spencer, theatre critic for London’s The Telegraph, was disappointed and gave the show thumbs down. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8306871/Spider-Man-Turn-off-the-Dark-the-not-so-super-hero-of-Broadway.html.

My reaction was different. I enjoyed it and think my grandchildren will as well. The show combines the sounds of a rock concert – not surprisingly, as Bono and The Edge provide the lyrics and the music – with the acrobatic feats of a circus. None of the songs seemed memorable and I would have preferred that the director cut another fifteen or twenty minutes from the show, but that did not detract from the magic of the stunts, the impressive design of the sets and the creativity of the costumes. It is not a show that depends upon great acting skills; after all these are cartoon characters. Nevertheless, Patrick Page as Norman Osborne/The Green Goblin was perfect as a campy, over-the-top villain, and I thought that Reeve Carney as Peter Parker and T.V. Carpio as Arachne were particularly well cast. To the extent that Broadway faces competition from myriad sources, enlivening audience experiences becomes critical to its future. A new genre is perhaps being created. You have to be there. The show cannot be replicated on any other medium. Spider-Man and the Green Goblin swinging out over the audience, in an arc or in complete circles, rising and falling, are spectacles not to be missed – of course better when they stay aloft.