Spider-Man: The Musical, music by U2

This may the first Broadway production to make record money during its previews and then flop when it goes live. Assuming they ever land that pesky, elusive ending, that is. Might I suggest lighting the cast on fire? It worked for Metallica.

not really thinking this will ever open

Waiting for Doc Ock

Taymor should try her hand at a musical adaptation of "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" next.

wld be great if it turned out steve ditko was carrying out a phantom-of-the-opera-like vendetta against this

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ESC4bygtp2M/SHxxLB7wVII/AAAAAAAAEE8/cn7ug6kRKdc/s400/Ditko+Mr+A+Laughs+witz4p8pn2.jpg

they should announce new untested scenes every so many weeks, the way other shows have "8 weeks only!" stuntcasting

or combine the two. "Bono to be flung across stage until April 13th!"

U2 must be scrambling to make a new album to release a month after this opens/closes.

lol @forks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/jan/26/spider-man-musical

against the producers' wishes, all the NY papers have run reviews today...so, it officially stinks.

http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/theater/reviews/spiderman-review.html?hp

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/02/08/arts/jp-theater/jp-theater-popup.jpg

There is also the Geek Chorus (Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Mat Devine, Alice Lee), a quartet of adolescent comic-book devotees, who would appear to be either creating or commenting on the plot, but in any case serve only to obscure it even further. They discuss the heady philosophical implications of Spider-Man’s identity while making jokes in which the notion of free will is confused with the plot of the movie “Free Willy.”

Good for the papers, fuck the producers trying to tell them to wait.

It's not their fault the opening has been delayed so many times...besides, you're charging full price for tickets, fans deserve to have a professional opinion to guide them.

So glad Brantley did this one, he has a knack for insulting duck shows.

Also gates/capacity has been on the decline for Spidy too.

While the NYT doesn't carry the weight it once did with the theatre community, this review will do damage, and to that I say...good.

Give these actors Purple Hearts, a hefty severance package, and free them from career suicide...save that for the production team!

My guess would be that the critics community didn't care for the way this idiot enterprise was becoming the face of Broadway, and after the endless postponements they united to hasten its demise. LIKE SUPERHEROES!

Be great if they updated their marquee with the one rave review they've received so far...from Glenn Beck.

Loved that Ben Brantley review, particularly this Luther Ingram moment:

Because only when things go wrong in this production does it feel remotely right

"The songs by Bono and the Edge ... blur into a sustained electronic twang of varying volume, increasing and decreasing in intensity, like a persistent headache."

So how is that different from... oh, never mind.

Sounds like the best stuff they've done in years

A roundup:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/spider-man-turns-off-the-critics/?ref=arts

Backhanded disclaimer:

The choreography took some thumps, and the flying sequences did not particularly wow the critics (all of whom, it’s perhaps worth noting, are adults).

Yeah, what about the child reviewers? and the idiots? why don't we let the idiots review this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNkYQvV5w6g&feature=player_embedded#

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8910/image0gq.jpg
Who do I shot to get out of this production?

Same guy:

http://www.youtube.com/user/petermmarino#p/a/u/0/dPH7vZ3Rev8

^hilarious review quotes in less than a minute.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/whats-not-to-love-jackie-mason-waits-for-spider-man-to-break-his-dubious-record/

This damn show was simply using up all of Broadway's oxygen.

Now, maybe people will start talking about The Book of Mormon, which may be great or may suck, but at least won't be an overproduced fiasco.

The Book of Mormon: The Musical

Oh Moroni!

"... their most howling derision was reserved for a shoe-related number in the second act called Deeply Furious, or, as Variety puts it, "the spiders-in-high-heels number which is fast developing into musical-theatre legend". Elisabeth Vincentelli from the New York Post dismissed it as "a preposterous number", while Rooney admitted that "this is where the show really jumps the shark [...] Arachne and her Furies go shoe-shopping before entering the human world. Seriously."

really need You Tube footage of this in my life. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/feb/09/spider-man-musical-reviews-roundup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPH7vZ3Rev8

Yeah, this production's in no trouble at all...

http://www.deadline.com/2011/02/breaking-roberto-aguirre-sacasa-hired-to-rework-spider-man-turn-off-the-dark/

What's funny is that the folks that saw it both before and after the book was allegedly worked on the first major time said that not only did it still suck, but that it remained more or less the same. This far down the line I can only imagine so much of the show is locked into place that whatever changes can still be made to the story are limited at best.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/theater/16vanessa-redgrave.html?scp=1&sq=redgrave&st=cse

The director, David Esbjornson, described Vanessa Redgrave’s focus on puzzling out her character as “laserlike and total,” and this seemed wholly so. For example she wasn’t too familiar with the other Broadway fare around her; she referred to “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the $65 million musical extravaganza a few blocks away, at one point, wonderfully, as “Let the Light Come in From the Dark, Superman.”

Okay SHE should be doing the rewrites.

Brilliant. Cannot be improved upon.

Funniest thing are the threads on BroadwayWorld.com. For message boards it's not bad but there's a few doofuses in the Spiderman thread admonishing everyone for hoping the show fails because "of the economy impact" of the show.

Err last I looked the Spidy investors won't be denting Wall Street or getting a bailout

I might go see Miss Daisy if Redgrave wore the Knicks shirt onstage.

Michael Feingold on why he didn't bumrush Spider-Man:

It all has little to do with theater, and even less to do with criticism. Postponements, accidents, and epic cost overruns generate publicity. If seeing the show that provoked such publicity tempts you, you don't really care whether one reviewer called the score forgettable and another thought the story was incoherent. A critic trying to interfere with that public's interest is ludicrous—he might as well stand outside an amusement park bitching that the Ferris wheel doesn't look like a Rodin.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-02-16/theater/spider-man-turn-off-the-kvetch/

Lol, idiot producer posted this blog (and even logged onto BroadwayWorld to show everyone). What an idiot...

http://www.crazytownblog.com/crazytown/2011/02/look-out-here-comes-a-spider-critic.html

Never knew Jackey Harvey moonlighted as a producer.

excellent use of bolding

The producers of the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” have brought on a veteran musical supervisor and conductor, Paul Bogaev, as a consultant to help improve the performance, vocal and orchestration arrangements, and sound quality of the songs and numbers, a production spokesman, Rick Miramontez, confirmed on Monday.

I guess it's about time to readjust that budget figure, huh

http://thespideyproject.blogspot.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiV-9HblOvM

The producers of the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” have brought on a veteran musical supervisor and conductor, Paul Bogaev, as a consultant to help improve the performance, vocal and orchestration arrangements, and sound quality of the songs and numbers, a production spokesman, Rick Miramontez, confirmed on Monday.

There's some quote coming to mind right now involving "deckchairs" and "Titanic", but damned if I can remember the rest of it.