I remember thinking, when I first heard that they were doing a Spider-man musical, that it was a terrible idea. I had friends go to the early preview performances and their comments about the show merely bolstered the idea that Turn Off the Dark was a multi-million dollar mistake.
The troubles of the show are well documented, and give rise to jokes about the show to this day (almost 2 years after it's official opening). The fact that the show was in previews for months, underwent heavy revision, fired one of it's major creative forces, and has a laundry list of injured actors seems to overpower thoughts about the actual show. There are very few legitimate reviews in geek circles about the current production, and most of what people know seems to be based on the initial version that has long since gone the way of the dodo.
So, let me take a few minutes to share what I thought about Spidey the musical.
Firstly, the show is no where near the disaster that people claim it was in it's initial performances. In fact it's pretty damn good. Not Best Musical good. But definitely a show that deserves the standing ovations it gets.
CAST:
Reeve Carney has a decent voice. It's not a broadway voice, though. Carney is apparently the frontman to a rock band, and he has the voice for it. The problem with that, though, is that in a cast of musical theater performers, his voice just sounds weird and doesn't blend in. It also makes his Peter Parker seem jarring as he plays nerdy pre-Spidey Peter very well, but then sings and suddenly sounds like a rock star. Personally I'd be very interested to see the alternate Peter who is listed as going on at "select performances".
Rebecca Faulkenberry was good in the role of MJ, even though she had very little to do (doesn't MJ always have very little to do in most Spider-man adaptations). The role of MJ is lifted almost straight out of the Spider-man films, with MJ being Peters next door neighbor who has an alcoholic father. She plays MJ as strong in her own right, but at the same time the victim of her world. I think she could have brought a little more of the comic book MJ spirit to it, but honestly she was a better MJ than Kirsten Dunst.
Katrina Lenk was... wow. Arache has almost nothing to do in the current version of the show. She was Julie Taymor's brainchild, and a remnant of the failed version of the show. She's basically the "spider totem" element from the Straczynski run on the comics personified, and also, sort of, Peters conscious. All of that's probably a little too deeply thought out for a character who has 3 scenes. Lenk, however, definitely earns the wow because she plays the hell out of it and gives her songs a vocal power that the Arache's in the shows official videos just lacks. She gives some, I guess you could call it, eastern sounding vocalizations to the pieces that the recordings lack which really make her songs a genuine treat to listen to instead of just weird remnants that didn't get scrapped because they were costly to produce.
Bob Cuccioli as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin was probably the best thing in the show (yes he's billed as Robert Cuccioli, but back when he was in Jekyll & Hyde the entire fan community called him Bob, to distinguish him from Rob who did the matinees.... so Bob shall he remain). Frankly Bob was the reason we went to see the show because I'm a Jekkie and he was the original, and best, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. He made Osborn a bit of a southern gentile and it worked. He played it with a humor and warmth that Osborn lacks, probably rightly so, in the films. His Goblin is over the top in the best way, and frankly I think his voice is more suited to the role than Patrick Page, who is on the recordings. Cuccioli got, probably, the loudest reaction from the audience... and he deserved it 110%.
MUSIC
It's a really hit or miss show in terms of music. Some of the songs are pretty catchy, most notably to me Bouncing Off the Walls and A Freak Like Me Needs Company. Other songs are just kind of flat and excuses for set pieces like Bullying by the Numbers and Sinistero. More specifically, Sinistereo might as well not exist as a song because it's done during a video presentation of the villains attacking New York, and just sort of becomes background music, which is terribly sad for a Broadway production.
The strangest thing, though, was that every now and again a random U2 riff pops up, or a U2 song is used outright. One of those uses is a pretty amusing gag, but the rest were pretty unnecessary.
SETS
Personally I thought the sets were amazingly cool. Everything was built in forced perspective with predone shadows. It was like the cast was performing in a comic book panel. Occasionally elements would be flown in, like the windows at the Daily Bugle, that had elements at strange angles, but it was always built with single perspective, and worked really well.... better than it had any right to. Additionally when the Chrysler Building appears in the shows final scene, complete with a view straight down to the street below, you can't help but be impressed that they managed to pull something like that off on stage with a couple of flat elements at angles.
It is seriously a series of comic book panels, no more no less.
It's also impressive that they manage to create things like the Brooklyn and Queensboro bridges complete with subways trains.
What's nor quite as impressive, and I guess this is where it should be mentioned here though they're not strictly set pieces, are the giant cut out Spidey and Gobby that show up a couple of times. When Spidey first shows up, it's kind of cute and over the top and almost laugh out loud funny. When Gobby first shows up, it's in a dream so... okay whatever. But then both show back up at the climax as kind of a lazy way of allowing two people to be in multiple places. It's a little sad and more than a little awkward... probably the worst thing in the show for me.
COSTUMES
As hokey as Julie Taymor designs may seem when viewed out of context, the weird stylized nature of everything worked very well when performed on stage. From the 1940's gangsters to the weirdly cartoon looking Swarm (who looks NOTHING like his comic book counterpart), it all just comes off as silly and a little campy, which is absolutely necessary for a musical about a superhero. I'm sorry, but doing any comic book as a musical with a straight face just... yeah.... don't get me started.
OVERALL
Really, I had a great time at the show. It's not something that will ever change your life, or even your view of musical theater, but it's a hell of a lot of fun.
Granted, this isn't the first time I've seen a Spider-man live show (they did a Spider-man Live Stunt Spectacular about 10 or so years ago that I saw), but it is easily the better time. The only things I really found lacking in the show is that they make no effort to have Spider-man actually swing by his webs. In the prior live version, they always had the actor have his hand looped into a line that he swung from. I really with the musical had done something similar because frankly Spidey seem a little like Peter Pan with no clear web that he's swinging from.
If you have doubts about the show, I really encourage you to give it a chance. It's a fun time with some catchy music and some great performances. Visually it's unlike anything else I've seen, and you know damn well that once it closes on Broadway it'll never be restaged anywhere because of the sheer cost of staging it (I'm fairly sure it's by far the most expensive Broadway show in history) and the physical demands of the show (what national tour can readily fly actors over the audience at the shows climax).
It's not the mess it was when it was first staged.
Trust me, give it a shot.
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