Why anyone thought to call Spider man: Turn off the Dark a new musical is as great a puzzlement as one can find. It is not a musical. It is a two and half hour long theme park stunt show that happens to have singing and dancing in it. What is happening on stage every night at The Foxwoods Theater is admittedly visually stunning. Creatively speaking, it's stunning in a different way.
The show begins somewhat promising. The first 15 minutes are quite good. The visuals seem to be coming from an organic and specific place driven by plot, story and character development. After that initial first 15 minutes it's all down hill from there. There is a 5 minute song and dance number called "bullying by numbers" in which high school kids who look as though they've repeated senior year 8 times beat up Peter Parker for the entire number.
It's hard to say which is worse, the book, or the music. It's almost as if they are competing to see which can be more cringe inducing. The songs, admittedly, are not all bad. There are some very interesting melodies at work. Unfortunately the lyrics don't make sense, have no sense of plot or character development, and are some times even laughable. Most of the songs do not serve the story, but rather slow it down.
There are a few notable exceptions with the songs, the book however, is all bad. The dialogue is shoddy at best. It's embarrassing some of the things these people are forced to say. Not only that, but so much of it doesn't make any sense. Songs and battles come out of no where. It's hard to imagine that twelve weeks ago this was actually worse.
Patrick Pages deserves kudos as Norman Osborne/The Green Goblin. He sells that crap like it's Sondheim. His portrayal of Norman Osborne is as real and emotional as you're going to get in what is essentially a circus. Jennifer Damiano has a pleasing voice, but unfortunately gets bogged down by the material. She is unable to "rise above" the crap dialogue and deliver a commanding performance.
The biggest disappointment is Reeve Carney as Peter Parker. This is not the face of Peter Parker. This is the face of Peter Parker if Peter Parker were tall, blond, sexy, and joined an Emo Rock band. Not only does he not look the part, he cannot act, and sings just like Bono, which is not appropriate for Broadway, nor is it pleasant to listen to for two and a half hours.
Visually, it's a masterpiece, and there is nothing in the world to parallel what is happening on that stage. The Act II battle between The Green Goblin and Spider man is absolutely jaw dropping. The rest of the show is just plain boring. If this had been a 45 minute theme park show with a few hummable tunes and spectacular effects, I'd be humming a different tune, so to speak.
The team that was brought in when Julie Taymore was ousted had a lot of work to do, and they did the best that they could in 8 weeks. Perhaps the show will live on in either a touring company, Vegas edition, or London production that will offer them the chance to make further tweaks to the book and the score.
In closing, I advise knowing what you are getting yourself into before you see this show. It's a lot of money to be spending on a night out if you aren't prepared for what you're in for. Also, if you have a chance to listen to the score (I use that term loosely) before you attend you should do so, as some of the lyrics are difficult to understand in the theater.
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