Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, A Review / Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D

Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark

A Review

Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.

Last night, I saw the preview of the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. It’s not really a musical; it’s a spectacle. It succeeds as a spectacle, fails as a musical, and hangs itself as a Spider-Man origin story. It’s easier to find good things to say about the spectacle aspect, so I’ll start by reviewing that aspect of the play.

Spider-Man: The Spectacle

Director/writer Julie Taymor and co-writer Glen Berger wanted to create a spectacle-something that was more than a musical. They succeeded. The sets were a wonder to behold (especially in the first half of the show). Aerialists, dressed as Spider-Man, the Green Goblin, and Arachne, flew about the stage and balcony, allowing viewers to feel a part of the production. In fact, because of the numerous injuries suffered by actors during rehearsals and previews, when the aerialists flew overhead it made me wonder—what if their cables broke and they fell on the audience? (And wouldn’t that be analogous to what New York’s pedestrians would wonder if an actual Spidey and actual Green Goblin were duking it out in the skies above Manhattan, without the cables?)

Even as a spectacle, though, the pacing of it didn’t work for me. Most of the spectacular elements were in the first half of the show, so when the effects and wow elements were fewer (and repeating) in the second half, it was a let-down. During the last hour of the play, I kept looking at my watch. If you see the play and leave at intermission, you’ll see the best parts. Grade for spectacle (especially the first half): A.

Spider-Man: The Musical

In a good musical, the songs move the story forward. Unfortunately, the music in this play didn’t do this very effectively. The actors often spoke a “recap” of the gist of the song in order to transition to the next scene or to move the story along. (If you see this play, bring along some tissues or napkins to stuff into your ears for some numbers: some songs were so loud that I had to cover my ears with my hands; I didn’t enjoy those.)

As you may know, the songs were written by Bono and the Edge, and it showed. The songs didn’t have the structure or feel of a “Broadway musical,” which is okay in theory, but not in this execution. Sad to say, none of the songs were memorable—they didn’t have a great “hook” as do many Broadway songs or even U2 songs. Plus the “feel” of the music didn’t match up with Spider-Man’s character or story. Grade for music: B-. (I’m being generous here, taking effort into consideration in my grade.)

Spider-Man: The Origin Story

I’ve read (or seen) most every Spider-Man origin story there is because I’m writing a book on origin stories that includes a chapter on Spider-Man’s origins. I was looking forward to this musical to see how it compared with previous origin stories of the Webbed Wonder. I was disappointed. There isn’t a whole lot of “character development” in this story, and there isn’t much more of a plot; what plot there is focuses too much on Mary Jane in the beginning and not enough about Peter. Even though Peter/Spider-Man is a comic book character, his story is rich in the human drama of shouldering the burden of being talented and figuring what to do with those talents—how to put them to good use.

In Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, he’s not even a two-dimensional character—he’s one-dimensional. He’s less real and nuanced than ever. I’ve read that director Taymor et al. wanted to convey Peter’s burden and sense of responsibility—which makes a great story and what makes Spider-Man an everyman hero—but their efforts fell short of the mark. Peter comes across as a whiney guy, overwhelmed with his newfound abilities and gifts, and he never gets the hang of how to be a hero. Yes, he saves people; yes, he defeats the bad guys and offers to sacrifice himself, but he never slings to the heights of becoming a hero.

In fact, in this musical, Peter Parker does not actually appear to be a nice guy; we see him being thoughtless and selfish with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, who are portrayed as nags rather than caring people clearly trying to do their best. Moreover, he’s whiney and preoccupied when he’s with Mary Jane; why she’s attracted to this version of Peter Parker is a mystery.

Let me also say a word about why audiences might be leaving the theatre confused by the ending (at least as reported in the press). I can see why. At the start of the play, Taymor and Berger create a narrative structure of a play within a play: a group of high-school comic-book geeks discuss different Spider-Man storylines and characters—they argue what would happen if... These kids, in essence, frame the action of the story during the play. But Taymor and Berger break that frame by having these same teenagers in scenes with Peter Parker (which is confusing enough), and to top it off, the teens don’t appear at the end of the play to close the story. As framing narrators, they should come back to “complete” their story. In the second half of the play, the lines of the character Arachne make that frame even more confusing. Grade for story: C-/D+.

Based on the version that I saw, if you’ve got money to burn and want to see a cool spectacle, then by all means, see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. If you want to see a good musical, see something else. If you’re a Spider-Man fan, buy some Spidey comic books or graphic novels.

~//~

Patrick Healy of The New York Times ‘Arts Beat’ blog has compiled the following list of selected critical quotations:

New York Times: “The sheer ineptitude of this show, inspired by the Spider-Man comic books, loses its shock value early. After 15 or 20 minutes, the central question you keep asking yourself is likely to change from “How can $65 million look so cheap?” to “How long before I’m out of here?”

New York Post: “A snowballing budget, broken bones, a concussion, multiple delays, rewrites — and what do we get? An inconsistent, maddening show that’s equal parts exciting and atrocious.”

New York Daily News: “Except for the anthem ‘Rise Above,’ songs by Broadway rookies Bono and the Edge of U2 lack hooks to make them stand out. As if written in invisible ink, tunes are there and then slip from your mind.”

Newsday (subscription required): “When I saw the show in December, the story was scattered, the music shockingly mediocre. But Taymor’s stage pictures were amazing, and the flying was fun in a dumb, circus-y way. With the composers due back from their tour and safety issues more or less solved, it seemed likely that the show could be pulled together into an unusual, if not important, entertainment hybrid Taymor calls a ‘rock and roll circus drama.’ Yet, the show I saw Saturday night was the same bloated, muddled, often beautiful mess it was before all this supposed ‘work.’”

New York Magazine: “It’s by turns hyperstimulated, vivid, lurid, overeducated, underbaked, terrifying, confusing, distracted, ridiculously slick, shockingly clumsy, unmistakably monomaniacal and clinically bipolar. But never, ever boring.”

Bloomberg: “After all this expenditure of talent and money, ‘Spider-Man’ is probably unfixable because too much has gone into making humans fly, which is not what they are good at. It imitates poorly what the ‘Spider-Man’ movies do brilliantly with computer graphics — and without putting live actors in jeopardy.”

Chicago Tribune: “The much-told woes of ‘Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark’ boil down to a problem that has similarly ensnared far humbler new musicals: an incoherent story. For without a book with consistent rules that a mainstream audience can follow and track, without characters in whom one can invest emotionally, without a sense of the empowering optimism that should come from time spent in the presence of a good, kind man who can walk up buildings and save our lousy world from evil, it is all just clatter and chatter.”

Hollywood Reporter: “There’s one thrillingly beautiful image about ten minutes in — during a song appropriately titled ‘Behold and Wonder’ — as aerialists suspended from saffron-colored sashes weave an undulating fabric wall that fills the stage. And the impressive speed and agility of the flying sequences is a major leap forward in action terms from the slow glide of ‘Mary Poppins.’ But mostly, Spider-Man is chaotic, dull and a little silly. And there’s nothing here half as catchy as the 1967 ABC cartoon theme tune.”

Los Angeles Times: “To revise a handy little political catch phrase, ‘It’s the storytelling, stupid.’ And on that front, the failure rests squarely on Taymor’s run-amok direction.”

Variety (subscription required): “The performers are somewhat smothered by effects. Jennifer Damiano, late of ‘Next to Normal,’ stands out as the embattled heroine; Matthew James Thomas, on as standby to leading man Reeve Carney, was perfectly likable. Otherwise, only Michael Mulheren manages to break through the material.”

The Washington Post: “What’s apparent after 170 spirit-snuffing minutes in theFoxwoods Theater — interrupted by the occasional burst of aerial distraction — is that director Julie Taymor, of ‘The Lion King’ fame, left a few essential items off her lavish shopping list:

1. Coherent plot

2. Tolerable music

3. Workable sets

To be sure, Taymor has found a way to send her superhero soaring above the audience. And yet, the creature that most often spreads its wings in the Foxwoods is a turkey.”

[Note. As of March 10th, Julie Taymor has resigned as the dubious musical's director.]