My Theatre Thoughts - Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark
14.5.18
When it comes to weird , bizarre and failed Broadway musicals I feel like I could talk about them forever. I want to talk about musicals a bit more on my blog so thats whats happening. I thought it would be great to share my opinions on some shows that have either been successful but not my cup of tea , awful , failed or just really don't work in a theatre at all. This all my own opinions and most of these shows I've not seen as they are either on broadway , aren't even running anymore or the show isn't too my taste.
This post will be about the musical version of Spider-Man. Thats right they turned the spider superhero into a musical on Broadway that ran from 2010-2014. I am huge fan of all things Marvel and spider man is my favourite superhero and had a lot of expectations for this to be good when I heard about this musical. I think I heard about it in 2011. It was around the same time as I found out about the Addams family. There was two different versions of the show , one really with a really complicated storyline and another one with the same storyline but less complicated.
The plot of the show is basically the origin story of how Peter became spider man. I feel like they based it a lot on the first spider man film that Tobey Maguire was in. The villain in the show is the green goblin and the love interest is Mary Jane Watson. They also added in a mythical legend spider superhero that just felt like they didn't need to add the subplot it just doesn't work. The origin story of Spider-Man has been covered a lot and it gets pretty boring when they've already released two films that are basically the same with just a few different characters added into the mix.
The songs were written by the edge and bono from U2. U2 are one of the biggest bands in the world with ok-ish songs but get two members of U2 to write songs from a musical and it has disaster written all over it. The songs by the green goblin are camp and everything you'd expect from a villain song. I just feel like they've tried too hard to make the green goblin a evil super villain that also likes to sing terrible songs that are trying to hard to be like your stereotypical evil villain song. A Freak Like Me is just so bloody bad I can't really describe how dreadful I thought it was.
Rise up is the emotional power ballad in the show and surprisingly I don't actually hate it , or actually like it. I think I'm somewhere in between with that song but I feel like there needs to be a really dramatic drop and build up because it falls flat on it's face a little bit.
Boy falls from the sky was actually the only song from the show to be written by all members of U2. I don't like this song that much as it sounds too much like a U2 song and doesn't really slot into the show that well. Theres a song called bouncing off the walls that is so repetitive that I had to stop listening to it because it was driving me mad. I can't really say much about the music when I've not put the songs to anything visual which might help the songs out a little bit more than just listening to them.
Turn off the dark started to be developed in 2001 and readings started in 2007. The show suffered a lot of issues when it came to their budget causing a lot of the delays. The show was scheduled to open in 2010 but ended up getting rescheduled until they could fundraise the money for the show to go ahead. The official opening was pushed back to February 2011 after already being pushed back a month earlier. The show eventually opened in March 2011. It was delayed again until the summer of 2011 which included the cut of previews.
A lot of injuries happened during the run of the show. One of the more notable ones was a accident that caused one of the stunt men to be hospitalised for a few months. The actor fell from 20ft and fell into the orchestra pit due to a harness not being connected to a safety cord and other pretty awful injuries left a lot of the stunt actors in hospital.
My opinion on this show is split. It doesn't work in a theatre setting but I think it might work in an arena setting for sure. With the amount of injures that happened during the shows run it seems like an arena show would have worked better. The songs aren't my cup of tea either but I just feel like it has a lot of potential to be good but it really isn't unfortunately. If it was to ever come here I think ticket sales would be patchy due to the mixed reviews it received whilst on Broadway. I wouldn't want to see this in the UK. I'm sorry but if they can't do a decent run in America then its kinda pointless for it to be brought over here in the future.
Ok thats the end of my little rant about Spider-Man : Turn Off The Dark. I've got got a few posts like this planned including one on Andrew Lloyd webber and lord of the rings. Thats right lord of the rings got the musical treatment and I've written a whole post about it.
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