I’ll be breaking protocol for tonight, for a very special reason. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a nearly unhealthy obsession with Spider-Man. I pride myself on knowing as much about the character as possible. I may not be the pre-eminent Spider-Scholar, but I think I could be considered an authority amongst my circle of friends, family, and acquaintances. On that note, tonight, I attended a preview of the new Spider-Man musical, “Turn Off the Dark.” I felt I had to share my thoughts on this event, as I have a pretty strong opinion on it.
To put it plainly, this thing was a travesty. There are not enough negative words to describe the damage it has done to my psyche to see Spider-Man portrayed in this way. Fortunately, I have a strong enough bond with the character to understand that he is left to the whims of the writer. That being said, whoever wrote this thing needs to be taken out back and shot.
To be fair, there were some bright spots, although it has very little to do with the script. The actors chosen to play Mary-Jane Watson and Peter Parker, I feel, were well cast. They both approached their roles with the correct amount of respect. They had good chemistry together, and they had the right look. There were some good songs (although only really about 3 or 4) and the special effects were pretty cool. Seeing Spider-Man swinging around the theater and Green Goblin flying around live is an awesome experience, although you have to really ignore all the obvious wire work. I know they have to, since you can’t CGI a live performance, but they honestly could have used some more unobtrusive equipment.
My biggest problem with the show was that the story just seemed really unfocused. It seemed like they tried to blend backstory from 3 different sources (the Spider-Man movie, the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book, and some stuff from the Amazing Spider-Man series) but forgot what belonged to which part, and it ended up being a complete jumble. When the whole purpose behind the creation of Spider-Man is presented as sort of a toss-away, you really lose respect for the people who wrote the script. To understand what I mean, understand that at no point did I hear Uncle Ben utter the words “With great power comes great responsibility.” Without those words, and without establishing the relationship between Peter and Uncle Ben, there IS no Spider-Man.
Other bad parts (and there were plenty of them) revolved around the villains that Spidey had to fight. They turned the Green Goblin into a southern goofball, and the other five Spider-Man villains were just guys in costume that got whacked, with no purpose to them than to be cannon fodder. I say 5, because the 6th member was some made up… thing… that can only be considered a complete abomination. You get Lizard, Kraven, Carnage, Electro and Swarm (the last one of which is not a regular enemy, but at least he’s appeared in the comics) and then you have Julie Taymor’s creation, Swiss Miss. No, not the little Swiss girl that’s on the hot cocoa pouches. It’s some silver creature that is supposed to be a human equivalent of a swiss army knife. It looked as bad as it sounds.
I won’t go into spoilers of the show because 1) I don’t think I could truly describe how bad it is (you almost have to see it for yourself to understand) and 2) because I don’t want to hurt your sensibilities if I were able to describe it. To give you a hint, there was a segment involving multiple women in spider garb (that is with 8 limbs) singing about shoes… Yeah, my head hurt after that one.
I feel bad about bashing the play, because I’m such a huge Spider-Man fan, but to see the treatment that they gave this show honestly hurt my feelings. There was a lot of potential there, and I think if treated right, you could definitely have an amazing show, but when you don’t have someone who understands the source material try to write a script, you get a complete mess, and that’s what happened here. I’ll be surprised if this thing lasts more than a few months, because people will be walking out left and right when they sit down and catch it.
