Spider Man - The Not So Super Hero of Broadway - It's the disaster-hit Broadway musical they tried to ban the press from seeing, after early previews suggested it was a £40m flop. Having lost patience after the offical media night was postponed time and again, Charles Spencer decided to buy a ticket and find out for himself.
Never mind turning off the dark. I spent much of this dreadful new musical muttering Please, Lord, make it stop.
And sometimes, miraculously, it did. Though the show has been previewing since last November, and audiences are being charged almost $300 for a top price ticket, the performance I saw on Saturday night twice ground to a halt in the first half. "Sorry folks, just a moment and we'll be back with you," a harassed voice announced over the public address system as the chief villain of the piece, the Green Goblin, dangled helplessly over the audience for several minutes, stuck on the wire on which he was supposed to be flying.
Critics are now breaking the embargo, deciding it is ridiculous not to review a show that has already been running for more than two months
Just a few minutes earlier he and Spidey had to improvise to fill another hiatus as something else went wrong and the show was stopped. Spider-Man poured himself a glass of stage champagne only to receive a stern warning from the goblin. "Careful," said the actor Patrick Page. "You've got to fly over the heads of the audience and I hear they dropped a few," he joked in a reference to the accidents that have bedevilled this production, landing several actors in hospital with serious injuries. It was, by some distance, the most entertaining moment of the entire show.
After numerous postponements, Spider-Man still doesn't officially open until next month, but theatre critics are now breaking the embargo, deciding it is ridiculous not to review a show that has already been running for more than two months, and is doing huge business at the box office.
Technical hitches aside, there is no time to make major improvements now, and the musical strikes me as being beyond salvation.
The director Julie Taymor, who was responsible for the hugely enjoyable stage version of Disney's The Lion King, has come up with a dire script in collaboration with Glen Berger. Not only does she drag the ancient Greek myth of Arachne into the storyline, a brilliant weaver who was turned into a spider by the goddess Athena, she has also added a Geek Chorus (geddit?) of nerdy comic-book fans who are supposed to be making up the narrative as the show progresses. As a result the production often seems both baffling and pretentious. We are a long way here from the guilty pleasures of the Marvel comic-books and the terrific Spider-Man movies.
There's a leaden lack of humour about most of the script, and though the flying sequences are exciting when they work (and even more fun when they don't) there is nothing here to match the thrills, skills and sheer imagination of Cirque du Soleil at its best.
But perhaps the biggest bummer of all is the score, written by Bono and The Edge from U2, and containing not a single memorable song in the course of the show's punishing two-and-three-quarter hours. Simultaneously grandiose and banal, the music never really rocks and sounds like a series of rejected demos for an album that never got made. Sure, it creates a moody film-noir atmosphere at times, but where are the big take-home tunes?
The designs are impressive, conjuring up a dystopian vision of New York, and the cast perform as if they really believe in the dire material they are lumbered with. Reeve Carney has a winning charm and moments of real anguish as Peter Parker, the reluctant super-hero; Jennifer Damiano makes a sexy, spirited heroine as his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson and Page proves a splendidly camp over-the-top villain as the mad scientist Norman Osborn who is transformed into the even nastier Green Goblin.
Unfortunately none of their game efforts are enough to save this 65-million-dollar sinking ship, which goes down with all hands. ( telegraph.co.uk )
Never mind turning off the dark. I spent much of this dreadful new musical muttering Please, Lord, make it stop.
And sometimes, miraculously, it did. Though the show has been previewing since last November, and audiences are being charged almost $300 for a top price ticket, the performance I saw on Saturday night twice ground to a halt in the first half. "Sorry folks, just a moment and we'll be back with you," a harassed voice announced over the public address system as the chief villain of the piece, the Green Goblin, dangled helplessly over the audience for several minutes, stuck on the wire on which he was supposed to be flying.
Critics are now breaking the embargo, deciding it is ridiculous not to review a show that has already been running for more than two months
Just a few minutes earlier he and Spidey had to improvise to fill another hiatus as something else went wrong and the show was stopped. Spider-Man poured himself a glass of stage champagne only to receive a stern warning from the goblin. "Careful," said the actor Patrick Page. "You've got to fly over the heads of the audience and I hear they dropped a few," he joked in a reference to the accidents that have bedevilled this production, landing several actors in hospital with serious injuries. It was, by some distance, the most entertaining moment of the entire show.
After numerous postponements, Spider-Man still doesn't officially open until next month, but theatre critics are now breaking the embargo, deciding it is ridiculous not to review a show that has already been running for more than two months, and is doing huge business at the box office.
Technical hitches aside, there is no time to make major improvements now, and the musical strikes me as being beyond salvation.
The director Julie Taymor, who was responsible for the hugely enjoyable stage version of Disney's The Lion King, has come up with a dire script in collaboration with Glen Berger. Not only does she drag the ancient Greek myth of Arachne into the storyline, a brilliant weaver who was turned into a spider by the goddess Athena, she has also added a Geek Chorus (geddit?) of nerdy comic-book fans who are supposed to be making up the narrative as the show progresses. As a result the production often seems both baffling and pretentious. We are a long way here from the guilty pleasures of the Marvel comic-books and the terrific Spider-Man movies.
There's a leaden lack of humour about most of the script, and though the flying sequences are exciting when they work (and even more fun when they don't) there is nothing here to match the thrills, skills and sheer imagination of Cirque du Soleil at its best.
But perhaps the biggest bummer of all is the score, written by Bono and The Edge from U2, and containing not a single memorable song in the course of the show's punishing two-and-three-quarter hours. Simultaneously grandiose and banal, the music never really rocks and sounds like a series of rejected demos for an album that never got made. Sure, it creates a moody film-noir atmosphere at times, but where are the big take-home tunes?
The designs are impressive, conjuring up a dystopian vision of New York, and the cast perform as if they really believe in the dire material they are lumbered with. Reeve Carney has a winning charm and moments of real anguish as Peter Parker, the reluctant super-hero; Jennifer Damiano makes a sexy, spirited heroine as his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson and Page proves a splendidly camp over-the-top villain as the mad scientist Norman Osborn who is transformed into the even nastier Green Goblin.
Unfortunately none of their game efforts are enough to save this 65-million-dollar sinking ship, which goes down with all hands. ( telegraph.co.uk )
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