On Broadway, design teams tend to test out plays that are experimental, or even simply strange. This month however, the team behind U2 and The Lion King are presenting a $65M musical spectacle, that was better left in the trash.
Spider Man opens in early January, where it will most likely gather highly negative reviews; the worst of the season, I suspect.
What Bono and The Edge (seriously, get real names) and Julie Taymor, Tony winning designer of The Lion King are presenting, is in a word....ridiculous.
The show runs close to three hours and contains one tuneless emo song after another. The actors run back and forth, changing into million dollar costumes and some even fly back and forth attached to million dollar wiring.
To say this is all style and no substance, would be a massive dis-service. The whole thing is crap.
Ok. Ok. The flying is kind of cool. Who doesn't want to see Spidey fight The Green Goblin, high above, often making their way into the Mezzanine. The sets are also quite beautiful. Including one scene set from the sky's point of view, in a downward/street facing/between buildings fight.
That's it though. I swear. The lyrics are beyond absurd. At the same time, they are all also cookie cutter songs, which can be taken in and out of any show. Generic at best.
The "story" is as follows:
Peter Parker, a geeky teen, is attacked by a special spider, which gives him super powers.
Yea yea we all know this one.
Let's skip to the silly.
So, The Goblin is defeated early on, in Act One. In Act Two, however a new "Spider Woman" villain named Arachne, becomes enraged when Peter denys his identity and decides to cause a power outage in NYC.
She enlists the help of six other villains (some real, some made up), whom help to cause havoc in the city. There is also a song about shoes. I'm not kidding.
All the while, there is a "Geek Chorus" telling us the tale, from their own imaginations.
The second act is completely devoid of any interesting flight, and it ends very suddenly. So suddenly, in fact, I suspect the show simply has no ending, and they chose to only drop the curtain.
Lots of wasted talent here. Jennifer Damiano, as Mary Jane gets to show off her beautiful voice for about 10 minutes in some of the most bizarre songs ever performed. Reeve Carney, as Spidey can't act for shit and has a nice enough voice. I suspect, however that he will not last long. Neither will the some 12 stuntmen that play Spidey in the air. This show is simply two exhausting to perform eight shows a week.
They have since announced they are canceling more previews to fix the show's many many problems.
Kudos!
I plan to return with popcorn in hand, after opening and await the closing notice with the rest of them.
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