Everyone’s favorite comic book reporter-turned-hero-arachnid is coming to Broadway with an extraordinary creative team and bankable stars… or not. With the promise of stunning special effects and songs by legendary hitmakers, getting Spider-Man on stage in musical form is proving to be a tangled web indeed.The show wows on paper when ogling the A-list production team. Tony® Award-winner Julie Taymor co-wrote Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark with Glen Berger. Producers hired Taymor to direct as well, banking on her Midas touch to grace Spider-Man as it did The Lion King, which grossed $3.6 billion worldwide. Grammy® Award-winners Bono and The Edge of U2 composed the music and lyrics, creating musical numbers that focus on choral harmonies not rock guitar anthems.
Tony® Award-winner and film character actor, Alan Cumming was cast to play the
villainous “Green Goblin.” Yet, in a bout of surprise casting, producers gave the role of “Mary Jane Watson” to television and indie film darling, Evan Rachel Wood.Producers searched extensively for the perfect Peter Parker, the reporter who becomes Spider-Man. Thousands of Broadway hopefuls belted their way though try-outs on the 6-city audition tour. The producers surprised everyone again with their announcement of Reeve Carney for the lead role of Peter/Spider-Man.
With a built-in audience, a spectacular creative and design team, and celebrity songsters, Spider-Man should be a hands-down triumph. However, the success of any show comes down to "the bottom line", and the numbers for “Spidey the Musical” are as scary as any lab experiment gone horribly wrong.
The opening scene—as leaked to the press—catches Spider-Man in the act of a high-flying damsel-in-distress rescue set against a cityscape of burning buildings and a broken Brooklyn Bridge. Wiring actors to fly has been done successfully in Peter Pan and Wicked, but Spider-Man's technical difficulty of managing bridges that travel and actors wired for extreme moves requires a reported 40 stagehands to handle the rigging.
The expansive and daring production design escalated the already exorbitant budget to $52 million, making Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark the most expensive musical in Broadway’s history. Additionally, the cost estimate of running this technical extravaganza comes to $1 million per week, surpassing West Side Story and Mary Poppins.
Of course, the music by Bono and The Edge will be good. However, few have talked about the music. The issues delaying the show all deal with extreme technical designs and the money needed to make them happen.
This desire to bring the cinematic feel to the theatrical stage is problematic, financially and artistically. The stage and the screen are two completely different animals, and no engorged budget will compensate for its shotgun wedding. By forcing the cinematic style of storytelling onto theatre-goers, producers and designers want to make theatre into something it is not, ignoring or apologizing for what theatre actually is.
In the theatre, we assume believability. Our “suspension of belief” is fully engaged as we voyeuristically peer through the fourth wall to join the fray of characters and emotions occurring on stage. Theatre audiences do not need the tricks and stunts that Hollywood has increasingly relied upon to create blockbuster films. The theatre cares about relationships and the interaction of the characters with one another, not high-flying stunts and mammoth sets that overshadow the music and the fundamental storyline. Even the new revival of Ragtime saw the disappearance of its famous car and a downsized staircase in favor of concentrating on the moments shaping the characters’ lives.
With some estimates saying Spider-Man will be another six years in development, it appears Spidey might join the retirement home of the over-produced and over-budget Broadway musicals. Let this also be a lesson: no show is guaranteed just because money and “names” are attached. At the end of the day, it still has to be good theatre.
Yeah, I agree with you on the difference between movies and theatre. It's like when I saw "A Steady Rain" with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. There was something so mesmerizing about the two of them telling a story through their tone of voice and body language. I want memorable characters onstage more than I want big budget stunts.
ReplyDelete