The Ultimate Slap in the Face

That's an image of the villain "Carnage" from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the $65M Broadway disaster I've been decrying for months.

Last week, the producers fired meglomaniacal director Julie Taymor (though "official" press releases say she will still be part of the show's creative team) and commissioned new songs from Bono and The Edge. They brought in director Phillip William McKinley (The Boy from Oz) and Marvel writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to fix the problems with the show, though at this point, it's probably beyond saving. 

I've said all along that this was a bad idea from the get-go, though a few theatre friends tried to defend it... The show is now scheduled to close for three weeks in order to fix it (though I doubt three weeks is enough  to come up with an entirely new second act) and is now officially scheduled to open June 14th, with previews resuming on May 12th.

While I am always a proponent of new theatricals, I will continue to express my disdain for this ill-conceived project until it closes, which should be sometime in July (sigh). I am always sad to see a show fail, but I honestly can't say I'll be sorry to see this particular show fall by the wayside. Not everything is worth musicalizing and not every idea (no matter how good it may seem at first) should be brought to fruition. Taymor, whose original concept came to her as a dream after 9/11) apparently had no prior knowledge of the Marvel source material, and tried to integrate completely irrelevant Greek mythology into the show. Maybe she should have read a few of the Marvel comics, or at least viewed the Sam Raimi films before attempting to adapt the character for a musical.

If you want to see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (whatever the hell that title means), I suggest you do so while you can. In the meantime, enjoy this parody from Jimmy Kimmel:

Ouch! Take that, Broadway!

I will always love "The Great Invalid," but sometimes the folks who run it just have to admit when they've been defeated.

More, anon.
Prospero

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