SPIDER-MAN: a BUMPY RIDE on BROADWAY the Broadway Production of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” Suffered from Vast Expenses and Discord

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FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES SPIDER-MAN: A BUMPY RIDE ON BROADWAY The Broadway production of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” suffered from vast expenses and discord. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times) TBook Collections

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The New York Times Company New York, NY www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/tbooks Broadway’s ‘Spider-Man’ Spins A Start Date

By PATRICK HEALY February 24, 2009

The widely anticipated new musical “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark,” with music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge and directed by Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”), took a big swing toward a Broadway debut on Tuesday: the producers announced that the show would begin previews on Jan. 16 at the Hilton Theater. The musical, produced by Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle, Martin McCallum, Marvel Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment, is to open on Feb. 18. Industry insiders have said its budget would be the largest in Broadway history, about $40 million; a spokesman for the show, Adrian Bryan-Brown, said on Tuesday that the producers would not comment on the dollar amount. ‘Spider-Man’ Musical Names 2 Of Its Stars

June 27, 2009

Evan Rachel Wood will be Mary Jane Watson and Alan Cumming will star as Norman Osborn (a k a Green Goblin) in the upcoming Broadway musical “Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark,” the producers announced on Friday. Previews were originally set to start on Feb. 18, 2010, at the Hilton Theater but have been moved back a week, and a new official opening date will be announced later. The musical has a glittery lineup of talent: the music and lyrics are by Bono and the Edge, it is written by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger and will be directed by Ms. Taymor. The producing team David Garfinkle and Martin McCallum said in a statement that the changes in production dates were needed because of the time it took to get the necessary state and city building permits and landmark approvals to prepare the theater. “We are thrilled that Evan and Alan are onboard, and we look forward to announcing further casting, including the webslinger himself, very soon,” the statement said. Broadway Spidey Hits A Bump

By RACHEL LEE HARRIS August 10, 2009

There’s been another setback for those eagerly awaiting Spider-Man’s arrival on Broadway early next year. A statement on Sunday from the publicists for Hello Entertainment, one of the producers of “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark,” said work had been suspended on the musical because of “an unexpected cash flow problem.” The statement went on to say: “The plans necessary for this correction are in hand now, and it is expected that activities, including work in the theater, will resume within the immediate future and with no material impact upon the planned production schedule.” No date for resuming production work was given. The show comes with a high-profile pedigree: the creative team includes the director Julie Taymor with music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge of U2, while the cast includes Evan Rachel Wood (as Mary Jane Watson) and Alan Cumming (as Norman Osborn). The budget is equally high profile: insiders put the price tag at $40 million, which would make it the largest in the history of Broadway. In June it was announced that previews, at the Hilton Theater, would be delayed by a month, from January to February. Hope Lives For Spidey

By PATRICK HEALY September 2, 2009

Modest construction work is expected to resume on Wednesday morning at the Hilton Theater on Broadway to prepare for the new musical production “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark,” even though the ultimate fate of the show is still in limbo, three people involved with the production said on Tuesday. Work on “Spider-Man” was suspended in early August because of cash flow problems facing the lead producer, Hello Entertainment. Some of the show’s prospective cast members, meanwhile, were informed that the musical might be canceled altogether, according to agents for those actors. The three people involved with the production said that there was only enough new money to have a handful of workers return to the Hilton on Wednesday; actors have yet to be reassured that the musical is on, and full-scale work on the multimillion-dollar scenery is still being delayed. The people said that the difficulty of raising money to fully capitalize the show, which is expected to cost $35 million or more, has yet to be resolved. They added that the musical’s problems would not be solved by Monday’s announcement that the Walt Disney Company would acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion; the Spider-man character is a Marvel property, but Marvel (and Disney) is not expected to put significant money, if any, into the show. A publicist for “Spider-Man” said previews for the musical, directed by Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”), were still expected to begin in February. More Delays Expected For ‘Spider-Man’ Musical

By PATRICK HEALY October 22, 2009

The new multimillion-dollar Broadway “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark” is now expected to start previews and open this spring later than scheduled, because of weeks of production delays and ongoing difficulties recruiting additional investors for the show, according to executive involved in the production. “Spider-Man” had been scheduled to begin previews Feb. 25 and open in March, but the executive said in an interview Thursday evening that there was “no way” that rehearsals for the musical would begin on schedule later this fall. The executive spoke on condition of anonymity because the producers have not authorized any comment about the musical. The executive cited the backlog of pre-production and casting work that has accumulated since early August, when work on the show was halted because lead producer David Garfinkle had not secured enough money to meet budget commitments and pay bills for some construction work. Some work resumed for the production at the Hilton Theater in early October after cash flow had improved somewhat. No final decision had been made for new dates for previews, nor has a date been set for opening night, the executive said, but added that the producers were now aiming for later in spring 2010. In recent weeks, Bono, the U2 front man who co-wrote the music and lyrics, has sought to recruit new investors, as has Mr. Garfinkle and the co-writer of the book, Julie Taymor, and the executive said that there had been some success toward that end, but could not provide details. The executive cautioned that the timing – not to mention the efforts to raise money for the show – were still in flux, and that an announcement would be made at some point this fall once Ms. Taymor is able to lock in a “realistic” timetable to start rehearsals. Mr. Garfinkle declined to comment on the status of the musical, a spokesman for the producers said Thursday evening. ‘Spider-Man’ Musical Announces New Producers, Star

By DAVE ITZKOFF November 6, 2009

After a meeting Friday to determine the fate of the Broadway musical “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark,” its creative team announced new producers as well as the actor who will portray the title character. Michael Cohl, a rock concert promoter with ties to the Rolling Stones and U2 will take over as the lead producer of the musical. A relatively unknown actor named Reeve Carney has been cast in the lead role of Peter Parker and his alter ego, Spider-Man. Mr. Cohl said that the troubled multimillion-dollar show would open sometime in 2010, Patrick Healy reports. A press release issued on Friday says: Michael Cohl has joined the production as lead producer on the show. Jeremiah J. Harris is now second producer on the show. The full producing team for SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark is Michael Cohl, Jeremiah J. Harris, Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle, Marvel Entertainment/David Maisel, and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The release adds: After an exhaustive search that included a casting call tour spanning six cities and thousands of candidates, the producers and creative team have selected Reeve Carney to play the role of Peter Parker, The Amazing Spider-Man. Carney joins previously announced cast members Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker’s girlfriend and Alan Cumming as Norman Osborn (aka Green Goblin). Mr. Carney is the lead singer of the rock band Carney. The release said that “Spider- Man, Turn Off the Dark” would open at the Hilton Theater next year, but did not provide a more specific timetable. ‘Spider-Man’ Musical Offers Refunds

By PATRICK HEALY January 13, 2009

After weeks of complaints from ticket holders, the producers of the Broadway musical “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark” announced on Tuesday that they would refund tickets through Ticketmaster for preview performances that had been scheduled to start on Feb. 25 but are now, as expected, canceled. The producers did not provide new dates for previews or an opening night, saying only that a revised schedule would be announced shortly and that they still planned to open the show in 2010. With music by U2’s Bono and the Edge and direction by Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”), “Spider-Man” has been marred by delays after an earlier group of producers was unable to raise the money to produce the show. The production is now expected to cost about $50 million, making it the most expensive in Broadway history. ‘Spider-Man’ Musical Loses Its Mary Jane

By PATRICK HEALY March 11, 2010

The long delay hindering the Broadway musical “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark” has claimed another casualty: Evan Rachel Wood, who was set to play Mary Jane Watson, has dropped out because of a scheduling conflict, according to a statement from the producers. Ms. Wood’s departure, reported by Variety, comes 15 months after it was announced that she would take the role. But in that time the original team of lead producers stumbled in raising the money to mount the show, which is expected to cost about $50 million, by far the most expensive on Broadway. A new lead producer, Michael Cohl, came on board in November to work with the director, Julie Taymor, at the behest of U2’s Bono and the Edge, who together wrote the music and lyrics for the show. The musical was scheduled to begin preview performances last month, but Mr. Cohl announced this winter that the show would be delayed until later this year. ‘Spider-Man’ Loses Alan Cumming

By PATRICK HEALY April 21, 2010

Alan Cumming has withdrawn from the long-delayed Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” because of a scheduling conflict, a spokesman for the show said on Monday night. Mr. Cumming, who won the Tony Award for best actor in a musical in 1998 for his role as the M.C. in “Cabaret,” was to play the villain Green Goblin in “Spider-Man” for Julie Taymor, the director and one of the book writers. Ms. Taymor and Mr. Cumming worked together on the movies “Titus” and most recently “The Tempest,” which is expected to be released later this year. “Spider-Man” was originally scheduled to begin performances on Broadway in February, but endured production delays because its first group of producers had difficulty raising money to mount the musical, which at that time was expected to cost $50 million. A new lead producer came on board in November and has said that the musical will go forward at the Hilton Theater sometime this year. New Mary Jane For ‘Spider-Man’ Musical

By PATRICK HEALY June 8, 2010

Three months after losing the film actress Evan Rachel Wood because of lengthy production delays, the upcoming Broadway mega-musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has a new choice for love interest Mary Jane Watson: Jennifer Damiano, the 19- year-old theater actress who plays the testy teenage daughter, Natalie, in the Broadway musical “Next to Normal.” Ms. Damiano, whose performance as Natalie earned her a 2009 Tony Award nomination for best featured actress in a musical, is leaving “Next to Normal” on July 18, a spokesman for a show said on Tuesday. Neither the spokesman nor other executives involved with “Next to Normal” would say what she is doing next. However, two theater executives with knowledge of the “Spider-Man” casting said on Tuesday that Ms. Damiano recently signed a contract to play Mary Jane in an upcoming musical, to be directed by Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”) and begin performances later this year at the Hilton Theater. A spokesman for the production said that no new casting for “Spider-Man” was being confirmed at this time. The musical, with music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and the Edge and a book by Ms. Taymor and Glen Berger, is expected to be by far the most expensive in Broadway history, with a budget of approximately $50 million. Performances were expected to begin last February, with Ms. Wood as Mary Jane, but the production was delayed for months last year as one set of producers struggled to raise the money for the budget until a new lead producer, Michael Cohl, was installed. The actor Alan Cumming, who was to play the villain Green Goblin, has also left the show because of delays. Ms. Damiano will be starring opposite the singer Reeve Carney in the roles of Peter Parker and Spider-Man. The two theater executives spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose Ms. Damiano’s selection before the official announcement. Ms. Damiano, who grew up in Westchester County, performed in regional musical productions as a child and made her Broadway debut at age 15 as an ensemble member in the original cast of “Spring Awakening.” She departed that production to take the role of Natalie in the winter of 2008 for the Off Broadway production of “Next to Normal” at Second Stage Theater. She stayed with “Next to Normal” during an overhauled production later that year in Washington, D.C., and continued with the rest of the cast when the show moved to Broadway in spring 2009. Ms. Damiano’s understudy in “Next to Normal,” Meghann Fahy, will take over the role of Natalie beginning July 19. ‘Spider-Man’ Rehearsals To Start (Finally)

By PATRICK HEALY July 21, 2010

Julie Taymor’s musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” looks increasingly like a go for Broadway. After a year of uncertainty about the fate of the $50-million extravaganza, a spokesman for the show said on Wednesday that Ms. Taymor and the full cast were scheduled to begin rehearsals on Aug. 16. Choreography rehearsals, including aerial flying lessons, began on Monday for some cast members, including the actor-musician Reeve Carney, who will play Peter Parker and his web-slinging alter-ego Spider-Man. “Wow, man, I can’t wait for the world to see this thing… It’s finally happening!!” Mr. Carney said by Twitter on Tuesday. Fifteen minutes later, he added: “I honestly can’t believe I’m getting paid to do things my mom would have killed me for when I was a kid! Ha!” An announcement is likely to be made soon about performance dates for the show, which has music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and the Edge — their first Broadway outing — and a book by Ms. Taymor and Glen Berger (“Max and Ruby”). Previews are expected to start in November at the Hilton Theater. A Rock Impresario Gambles On ‘Spider- Man’

By PATRICK HEALY September 9, 2010

Nearly a hundred feet above the stage of Broadway’s Foxwoods Theater, Michael Cohl wrapped his right hand around one of the cables that will soon fly actors over the audience at the musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” For a moment Mr. Cohl, the accidental producer of the most expensive show in Broadway history, was on top of the theater world, and appropriately so: he is the money man who after years of delays has sent “Spider-Man” airborne. Thanks to him, theatergoers will get to see for themselves if it soars, or falls to earth. He allowed a smile. “It’s going to happen,” he said as if reassuring himself. “It’s going to happen. Unless we’re really crazy after all.” A high-school dropout who became a powerful rock-music promoter for U2 and the Rolling Stones, all but inventing the modern concert tour, Mr. Cohl is the potential savior of the $60 million show, which begins performances on Nov. 14. He was recruited a year ago by U2’s Bono and the Edge — the first-time theatrical composers for “Spider-Man” — to try to salvage the show from a premature death when money ran out. Mr. Cohl, who at 62 still looks like a ’60s-era roadie, with unkempt hair, fuzzy beard and a daily uniform of T-shirt and jeans, was already a substantial investor. As lead producer he marched in with a roster of friends who knew his track record of mounting rock-show spectaculars like the Rolling Stones’ “Steel Wheels” tour. In the last year he raised 70 percent of the “Spider-Man” show’s record-setting budget while also using his impresario skills to renegotiate a host of production details. Those involved in the fate of “Spider-Man” had been tightlipped for months, especially after the original February opening date was postponed. Now Mr. Cohl is leading a new publicity push that includes a live kickoff on Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where Bono, Edge and the director Julie Taymor will discuss the show, and Reeve Carney, the relatively unknown musician chosen to play Spider-Man, will perform a musical number. And yet: Mr. Cohl has begun having bad dreams about “Spider-Man” and its myriad loose ends, after a 40-year career in which he said he never had dreams about business before. “As long as you don’t think about the whole big picture, producing ‘Spider-Man’ is a fantastic experience,” Mr. Cohl said during an interview in his temporary offices near the theater. “But once you look up and see it all, it looks very, very scary.” The show’s business structure, confirmed for the first time by Mr. Cohl, is an enormous theatrical gamble. The cost of the musical, widely reported to be $50 million, will have grown by an additional $10 million when all expenses are accounted for, Mr. Cohl said. He expected the running costs of “Spider-Man” to be slightly under $1 million a week — meaning that the show would need to have blockbuster sales on the scale of the top-grossing musical “Wicked” if he and his investors were to see a profit from the Broadway production alone. Other Broadway mega-musicals have cost far less: “The Phantom of the Opera” was $8 million in 1988, “Wicked” was $14 million in 2003 and “Shrek the Musical” was at least $25 million in 2008. “Spider-Man” ticket sales, which began on a limited basis to some credit card holders on Aug. 14, have yielded an advance of $3 million to $4 million. Some group- sales agents said that interest in the show had been lukewarm; their conventional wisdom is that many reliable Broadway theatergoers will wait for word-of-mouth and reviews before placing orders. Ticket sales to the general public begin on Sunday. Yet Mr. Cohl is already thinking beyond Broadway. At his most optimistic — and as a puckish, self-made multimillionaire, he is an optimist — “Spider-Man” will swing from New York to worldwide arenas that are traditionally the preserve of rock stars and Cirque du Soleil productions. The potential for profit is significant, he believes, justifying the extraordinary front-end costs for New York. That is, he acknowledged, if the show doesn’t “crash and burn” on Broadway this season. “I got involved because I believed deeply in three artists: Bono, Edge, Julie,” he said. “But there have been a lot of moments over the last year when I said, ‘This isn’t doable,’ when I went home and thought: ‘What am I doing? I could be on a beach in Florida.’ ” “Then there have been moments when you go, ‘This is exciting, this is why I did what I did for all those years,’ ” he added. “It’s nice to get the buzz back.” Bono, replying to questions on Thursday by e-mail, said he first reached out to Mr. Cohl last August when Mr. Cohl was on vacation in Spain and pleaded with him to take over the show after the previous lead producer, David Garfinkle, raised only 30 percent of the show’s costs from investors. Mr. Garfinkle was an untested producer, and given the economic climate, “Spider-Man” struck many as too risky. (Mr. Garfinkle, through a spokesman, declined to comment.) “U2 were used to risking and sometimes losing our own money, trying to push the envelope on what was possible with our stage shows,” Bono wrote in the e-mail. Referring to Mr. Cohl, he added, “His experience with Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones had confirmed his theory that the public understands production value and will reward risk-takers if the end result is superlative, not overindulgent.” Despite inheriting millions in unpaid bills, Mr. Cohl said he did not alter his long- held business philosophy — in essence, more is more — when it came to “Spider-Man.” His tendency to spend money for the best possible product stirred controversy during his brief tenure as chairman of Live Nation, the concert and entertainment company; he favored spending tens of millions to sign major artists for long-term relationships, a strategy that some colleagues found too costly. He left in 2008. That spare-no-expense attitude has allowed Ms. Taymor, a Tony Award winner for “The Lion King,” to pursue her vision of expansive aerial battles between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, swinging at 40 miles an hour to landing spots on the mezzanine and balcony levels. The show will have about 150 pieces of moving scenery and a three- dimensional set that looks like a pop-up New York. “Michael doesn’t come at questions by saying, ‘No, that’s too expensive,’ but rather, ‘How can we make it great?’ ” said Ms. Taymor, who also co-wrote the musical’s book. “For all the fits and starts we’ve had, he’s the ideal partner in trying something very risky.” A Toronto native, Mr. Cohl left high school and took jobs as a taxi driver and parking lot manager before becoming a partner in an Ottawa strip club. He developed an early love for playing banjo and folk music, and fell hard for rock ’n’ roll at his first concert, a Grateful Dead-Jefferson Airplane double bill. (He could not remember the year; his memory of long-ago concerts has, not surprisingly, a haze about it.) His first outing as a rock promoter in 1970 was a big flop: he booked the 17,000- seat Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, but sold so few tickets that he didn’t have the money to pay the band. As Mr. Cohl recalled, Mr. Owens sat in protest in his dressing room until Mr. Cohl borrowed $25,000 on the spot from the arena’s owner so the act could go on. An all-night New Year’s Eve concert during that period netted enough money for Mr. Cohl to repay the debt, but the boom-and-bust cycle continued; he once had to borrow $30,000 from his Uncle Murray to keep going. Over time, Mr. Cohl became the pre-eminent Canadian rock promoter, and his involvement in Rolling Stones shows there led to a career breakthrough when he became the chief promoter on the band’s worldwide “Steel Wheels” tour that began in 1989. For “Spider-Man,” Mr. Cohl raised the remaining 70 percent of the budget from investors in the media, film development and oil industries; some music executives had already put in money, but Mr. Cohl did not bring in any others. He also drew on contacts in Canada and Mexico, like the Lemon Film executives and brothers Billy and Fernando Rovzar, and also recruited the veteran Broadway producer James L. Nederlander. Mr. Cohl and the members of U2 have also put their own money into the show, though Mr. Cohl declined to say how much. “I don’t know if I’ll ever make any money — here’s hoping,” he said. “If it ends up being a big hit and it can go tour everywhere, then I’ll stand to do great. If it just ends up being a big hit in New York, then I’ll have some fun.” Costly ‘Spider-Man’ Can’t Get Off The Ground

By PATRICK HEALY November 5, 2010

It’s supposed to be the biggest, costliest, splashiest show of the Broadway season, but so far it’s just the most troubled. Executives with “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” said Thursday that the opening of the oft-delayed, $60 million musical would be set back once again, this time by three weeks, meaning it will miss lucrative Thanksgiving week, forgo an attention-getting bow over Christmas, and open during the box office doldrums of January. The first performance was supposed to be in nine days, on Nov. 14, but this is a show that its famous creators — the director Julie Taymor and U2’s Bono and the Edge — are laboring to finish. The two-dozen flying sequences are being worked out and still require safety approval from the state Department of Labor. The music, marking the Broadway debut of the U2 frontmen, still isn’t synchronized with special effects, plot and dialogue. Scene-to-scene transitions, essential for rhythm and safety, aren’t complete. Two actors have been injured hurtling through acrobatic rehearsal sequences. No one can even say for sure if the musical will be two and a half hours long, as expected, until run-throughs start. “It’s all about tweaking nuts and bolts now, and we’re slightly behind, but really it’s finally coming together at long last,” Michael Cohl, the show’s lead producer, said in an interview Thursday. Indeed, “Spider-Man” was originally supposed to begin in February before production shut down when the previous lead producer ran out of money. Beyond the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in ticket sales, the latest delay raises the stakes for “Spider-Man” — already the most expensive Broadway show of all time — to demonstrate that movie-size budgets and theatrical art can succeed on commercial Broadway. “Shrek the Musical” — to this point Broadway’s most costly show, at a reported $25 million — played 14 months but didn’t earn back its investment. Ms. Taymor, a Tony Award winner for “The Lion King” and a film director, has said she wants to “create a spectacle like nothing we’ve ever seen on Broadway before.” But in doing so, she, her fellow creators, and the producers have set a higher bar than any show has faced: It would need to sell tickets, which will be at average Broadway prices, on par with “Wicked,” Broadway’s monster hit, to ever have a real chance of earning profit. Ms. Taymor has a reputation for perfectionism, artistic ingenuity, and creating corporate-subsidized art without obsessing over costs and deadlines; accordingly, she has spent chunks of the relatively long 11-week rehearsal period experimenting with the flying and other special effects and taking care putting all the pieces together. Bono and the Edge have been at the Foxwoods Theater on 42nd Street this week preparing for a signal moment in the show’s gestation: the first time the orchestra and the cast will perform the score together in the theater, on Sunday. Members of the creative team say that Ms. Taymor, who declined to be interviewed Thursday, is keeping her cool. “It’s crunch time, no doubt,” said Glen Berger, who collaborated with Ms. Taymor on the show’s book. “Julie can’t wait to get it up so she can show people what we’ve all done, and she is trying to stay focused on the tasks at hand. And it’s hard, because there’s so much negativity out there about the show. It’d be a lot worse for us if the show didn’t work, but it does, as people will soon see.” Delays are common for new musicals opening on Broadway without out-of-town tryouts; “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” which opened on Thursday night at the Belasco Theater, twice delayed the start of preview performances to deal with an elaborate array of moving scenery and projections. “Spider-Man” is now set to begin performances on Nov. 28 and open on Jan. 11, 2011, instead of Dec. 21, a change that Mr. Cohl chalked up to “getting it right.” “It’s really no big deal if it’s Nov. 10, 14, 20 or 28,” he said. “I mean, it’s a big deal to the people whose shows are canceled, I feel terrible about that, but we’re doing the best we can.” Indeed, the delay scrambles options for theatergoers looking for a critic-tested Broadway extravaganza during the holiday season. The delay came as a sharp disappointment, for instance, to Samuel Moulton, a Harvard University lecturer who had bought tickets for Nov. 14 as the high point of a New York getaway with his girlfriend, who is flying over from England. “She’s a big theater fan, and I’m a big U2 fan, so this seemed like the perfect convergence of interests,” Mr. Moulton said. “There’s too much planning required to rebook. I’m just annoyed that they couldn’t decide all of this earlier, since it seems obvious that this show would be a technical monster.” While the producers may be publicly shrugging off the delay, envisioning “Spider- Man” as a years-long profit maker, the show has developed a problematic reputation, at least in the short term. Questions have been raised, and a state investigation is under way, about the safety of the flying. All of the attention on special effects may ward off traditional theatergoers who want a good score and story; some older people, for instance, have asked group sales agents if there is anything in the show for them. As much as anything, though, the delay and technical difficulties may make people reluctant to buy tickets until critics’ reviews and word of mouth begins, something that the famous “Spider-Man” brand in comics, movies and the American culture has never had to rely on before. “There’s no doubt that the delay is a big problem in building and buffing the brand, and building up excitement and anticipation for the show,” said Rick Kelley, vice president of Maxwell Group Entertainment, a theatrical group sales firm. “The Spidey icon has never needed buzz before, but this show needs more of it. I feel sorry for the box office folks — they’ll be losing money at the same time they’re rebooking tickets like crazy.” Mr. Kelley and other group sales agents said that they would have to rebook a few groups that had mid-November dates, though most of their business begins in December. The bigger draw over the holidays are families and day-of ticket buyers who are visiting New York, rather than groups that wait for discounts during slower months. “They’ll take a hit, losing Thanksgiving week and probably fall-off during Christmas and New Year’s because some people want to read the reviews before they buy tickets,” said Stephanie Lee, president of Group Sales Box Office, another ticket agent. “But, of course, if the show is a hit, they’ll have no problem making up that money.” The producers and creators are partly banking on the delay stirring interest in the big-budget special effects among the media and especially theatergoers, who thus far have shown modest interest in buying tickets, according to two executives involved in the production. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had either signed nondisclosure agreements or feared being fired if their names were published. The show’s advance ticket sales so far total about $8 million in hard cash with an additional $2 million to $3 million in unpaid group orders; that advance will likely decline because of the canceled previews this month. The dollar amounts would be healthy for a standard $10 million Broadway musical, but is low against the $60 million capitalization and the likelihood that the show will cost upwards of $1 million to run each week. Most Broadway musicals keep costs below $10 million in order to have a chance to earn a profit, because most of the 40 Broadway theaters do not have enough seats to sell at regular or even premium prices to make enough money to cover weekly costs and begin paying back investors — let alone turn a profit. When or whether “Spider-Man” reaches profitability is difficult to project; for one thing, it needs to open first. ‘Spider-Man’ Starts To Emerge From Secrecy

By PATRICK HEALY November 23, 2010

Nine years in the making, the moment came on Saturday to try running through the first act of the new musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” without stopping. As the band struck up an ominous tune that wailed like an ambulance siren, the enormous stage curtain rose to reveal a young woman dangling under a mock-up of the Brooklyn Bridge. Above her appeared a masked man, clad in skin-hugging tights, red and blue and all- American. We know him, but we may not know him, at least according to the musical’s creators. In their eyes, Peter Parker (and his alter ego, Spider-Man) is a character on a spiritual quest to reconcile human frailty with the possibility of greatness. It’s an idea that so enraptured the director, Julie Taymor, and the composers, Bono and the Edge, of U2, that they have built a $65 million (and counting) show around him, replete with perspective-skewing scenery and flying sequences that are unprecedented for Broadway. “Peter Parker is the one,” in Ms. Taymor’s words, “who shows us how to soar above our petty selves.” If he can soar, that is. Four minutes into the Act I rehearsal, a “Spider-Man” crew member announced on his mic, “We’re gonna hold.” It was the first of several pauses to deal with technical glitches, mostly in transitions between scenes. By the dinner break, only 15 minutes of the two-and-a-half-hour show had unfolded. And the first scheduled performance (this Sunday at 6:30 p.m.) was just eight days away. In the last week, the nervous creators of the show, the most expensive in Broadway history, have begun to see the hand-drawn sketches, the digitally animated videos, the comic-book-inspired costumes come to life — to see “Spider-Man” finally, literally, take flight. “Creating art that has never been done before is the reason I get out of bed in the morning,” said Bono, leaning forward in Row A on the aisle, as Reeve Carney, playing Spidey, rehearsed onstage. “This feels like it.” Yet time is running out. At the creators’ last dinner on Friday night before Bono and the Edge left for a U2 tour in Australia, Bono said bluntly that the show “won’t get out of the gate” and have a chance to catch on with audiences if technical problems persist, as they have in rehearsals. Still, he and the others did not dwell on mundane matters like flying harnesses. They are all artists who dream big, who compare the show’s themes to great literature and philosophy. “We’re wrestling with the same stuff as Rilke, Blake, ‘Wings of Desire,’ Roy Lichtenstein, the Ramones — the cost of feeling feelings, the desire for connections when you’re separate from others,” Bono continued. “If the only wows you get from ‘Spider- Man’ are visual, special-effect, spectacular-type wows, and not wows from the soul or the heart, we will all think that we’ve failed.” Achieving all those wows demands a profound double duty for Ms. Taymor, because many moments of pathos come in scenes where special effects are also in play. Slowly and only recently, she has been unveiling aspects of the show — both the story line and the effects — partly to counteract the negative press that has come with an oft- delayed and stratospherically costly production. “Take the ending of the show,” Ms. Taymor explained. “We’re going for what will be an intimate moment, but also one that will reflect some of the technical spectacle, and we will need to figure out how to stage that.” Bono murmured, “Figure out how to stage that?” He barked out a series of coughs for comic effect: “Nine days!” He coughed. “First preview!” Cough. “Nine days!” Ms. Taymor said: “Oh, nice of you to say, Bono, you’re out of here in Australia, and we’ll be here strapped with this thing. I’m just gonna drink my martini, man.” Bono observed: “The scope of this thing is just hard to grasp sometimes. It just doesn’t fit into the normal — “ “Broadway mishegoss,” Ms. Taymor said. “Right,” Bono said. “And trying to blend comic books — which is a very American contribution to the world of mythology — and rock music and Broadway into this thing of art that we don’t even have a word for.” For Ms. Taymor, delaying preview performances further — they were supposed to begin on Nov. 14 — is not an option. “Delaying just costs too much money, too much money, too much money,” she said. The show is scheduled to open on Jan. 11. Every week’s delay eats up to $2 million in lost revenue and, especially, higher expenses for technical rehearsals that require additional crew members. But Ms. Taymor said she hoped that those who bought tickets to preview performances, many of which have been offered at reduced prices, will “get to enjoy the art of making theater, as well as the magic of it.” Ms. Taymor has shielded that magic, as well as most other details of the show, from public view for years now. In recent weeks most attention for the show has dealt with the flying sequences, which New York State safety inspectors have been evaluating (as required by law). That inspection is expected to conclude shortly. Like the first “Spider-Man” movie, the show begins as an origin story, though Ms. Taymor has reached for Greek mythology in creating a brand-new villainess named Arachne, based on the woman who was turned into a spider by the goddess Athena and doomed to spin webs in the shadows for eternity. The introduction of Arachne (Natalie Mendoza) features some of the first breathtaking images, as a giant loom of interwoven silks takes form on the stage, and Arachne descends over the audience on a platform. As with the human-controlled puppets in her hit musical “The Lion King” and the dreamlike sequences in her movies “Across the Universe” and the forthcoming “Tempest,” Ms. Taymor’s artistic imagination hatches to life in Arachne. “What I really wanted to do, and what the ‘Spider-Man’ movies and comics haven’t done, is go to this absolutely fantastical, mythic place that is out of time, somewhere between reality and the dream world,” she said. And where the fits and the starts have occurred. At the Act I run-through, as Ms. Mendoza’s Arachne began descending, her spider-legged costume came undone because of a malfunction. Ms. Mendoza was hoisted back aloft; about 20 minutes later, the scene unfolded without incident. Such moments are the price of striving for a new sort of Broadway production, which was the high bar that the creators set for themselves at their first meeting in the winter of 2002. “We all agreed that there was no point in doing this unless it was new, groundbreaking, something that made it worthwhile for someone to see Spider-Man onstage instead of just getting the DVD for the first film,” said the Edge, U2’s lead guitarist. At meetings at their various homes in New York, Los Angeles, Ireland, and France, the four creators began improvising dialogue, lyrics and whole scenes. Bono, for instance, suggested that they base the character of Norman Osborn, an environmental scientist who becomes the villainous Green Goblin, on Ted Turner, the billionaire entrepreneur whose eccentricities had stayed with Bono after meeting at Mr. Turner’s rustic getaway in Georgia. “Bono described this fast-talking, always-thinking, brilliant and strange Southerner, and you’re always looking for vivid characters who will pop on the stage,” said Glen Berger, who wrote the show’s book with Ms. Taymor. The musical’s Osborn/Goblin (Patrick Page) has the gray hair and Southern accent of Mr. Turner and shares his concerns about the environment (hence, here, the “green” angle). “I hope Ted will like it,” Bono said. The Marvel comics became more than a source of storytelling inspiration: they contributed to clever moments in the pop-up design of the production, as when Peter Parker’s classroom at a Queens high school unfolds into view. In another sequence, in the side-by-side homes of Peter and his love interest, Mary Jane, the characters in one household freeze like two-dimensional figures in a comic book, while those in the other house interact in a three-dimensional conversation. “Part of the balance we’ve been trying to strike is how ‘comic book’ to go and how ‘human’ to go,” Ms. Taymor said toward the end of dinner. “What helps is that of all the superheroes, Spider-Man is the Everyman. His spiritual and psychological sides give us so much to explore.” After kissing Bono and Edge goodbye as they prepared to depart for Australia, leaving the first performances in her hands, Ms. Taymor looked at the open door that would lead back to the theater. “Every day,” she said, “I just wish there was more time to go even deeper on the story, the acting, the ideas at the heart of the spectacle.” ‘Spider-Man’ Takes Off, With Some Bumps

By PATRICK HEALY November 28, 2010

All $65 million of the new Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” took flight on Sunday night at its first preview performance, but not without bumps. The show stopped five times, mostly to fix technical problems, and Act I ended prematurely, with Spider-Man stuck dangling 10 feet above audience members, while Act II was marred by a nasty catcall during one of the midperformance pauses. Rarely is the very first public run-through of a new musical perfect, and indeed, the creators of this “Spider-Man” — the most expensive and technically ambitious production ever on Broadway — used news media interviews recently to lower expectations that work on the musical was anywhere near done. But after a two-week delay in performances already this month, which sucked up about $4 million, the producers decided that on Sunday night the show would go on. Costing more than twice as much as the previous record-holder for a big-budget show, “Shrek the Musical,” “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” took a bit of time revealing some of the reasons for its high expense. After beginning at 6:54 p.m. — 24 minutes late, mostly because of 1,900 people taking their seats — the show unfolded for 30 minutes with few of the special effects that have been the talk of Broadway this fall. At 7:23 p.m., an aerial scene began in Peter Parker’s bedroom to the delight of some audience members — yet it was halted two minutes later with the first of four pauses in Act I, apparently to free the lead actor, Reeve Carney (who plays Peter Parker and is one of those playing Spider-Man), from an aerial harness. Most of the night’s major flying sequences — which make up a relative fraction of the show — went off without a hitch, with children and some adults squealing in delight. And there were no signs of injuries, which had been a point of concern after two performers were hurt during an aerial sequence this fall. The fourth and final pause at the end of Act I was the worst glitch of the night by far. Spider-Man had just flown and landed onstage with the musical’s heroine, Mary Jane Watson (played by Jennifer Damiano), in his arms. He was then supposed to zoom off toward the balcony seating area, a few hundred feet away. Instead, a harness and cables lifted Spider-Man several yards up and over the audience, then stopped. A production stage manager, C. Randall White, called for a halt to the show over the sound system, apparently in hopes of fixing and re-doing the stunt. Crew members, standing on the stage, spent 45 seconds trying to grab Spider-Man by the foot, as the audience laughed and oohed. When they finally caught him, Mr. White announced intermission, and the house lights came on. The intermission began at 8:19 p.m.; it was still under way 34 minutes later when some in the audience began to clap in unison, as they passed their two-hour mark inside the theater. Mr. White, the production stage manager, then said over the microphone, “I know, guys, I know, I beg your patience,” and the clapping stopped. Act II began shortly after 9 p.m. and unfolded fairly smoothly until about 50 minutes later, when Mr. White called for a pause. After a few minutes, as some audience members were stretching, a woman in the audience suddenly shouted, “I don’t know how everyone else feels, but I feel like a guinea pig today — I feel like it’s a dress rehearsal.” She was met with a chorus of boos. The performance resumed a moment later; the show ended at 10:09 p.m. The musical has attracted outsized public and media attention by Broadway standards, in large part because of the money and talent involved: U2’s Bono and the Edge signed on to create the show nine years ago, and have written a full-length score, their first for Broadway, and helped recruit as the director Julie Taymor, a Tony Award winner for one of the last musical spectaculars to open on Broadway, “The Lion King.” The arrival of the first preview — it had originally been scheduled for January, then February, then Nov. 14 — brought out Spidey fans of all ages. Chris McAvey, a 24-year- old “fan of Spider-Man since the age of 5,” wore an old Spider-Man t-shirt that he picked up at a comic-book convention years ago. Asked about his expectations for the night, he noted that he had purchased tickets for one of the previews originally scheduled in February. “Let me put it this way,” he said, “For the time I’ve had to wait to see this, it better be good!” After the show, several audience members said in interviews that they would hold off on recommending the show to friends until improvements were made. Sherry Lawrence, a writer for a U2 fan Web site, said that even though she liked some of the songs, she planned to tell readers to wait for the creators to do more work during previews. But Marc Tumminelli, 30, who runs a Manhattan acting school for children, said he was concerned that the musical’s problems were too fundamental to be corrected quickly. “The story-telling is really unclear and I found it hard to understand exactly what was going on and why certain things were happening,” Mr. Tumminelli said. More delighted was the 6-year-old boy sitting a row ahead. “Parts of it were really exciting,” said the boy, Jack Soldano, whose parents brought him. “I’ve never seen people flying before.” Moments before the start of the performance, the lead producer of “Spider-Man,” Michael Cohl, took the stage to prepare the audience for what they were about to see. “I’m hellishly excited, and I can’t believe we’re actually here and it’s actually going to happen,” said Mr. Cohl, a prominent rock concert promoter who was recruited by Bono in 2009 to take over the show after the previous producers could not raise all of the money for it. Mr. Cohl said he hoped that the night would prove to be “one of the great Broadway and show experiences of your life,” but also warned that the performance might need to stop at points. Mr. Cohl has approved discounts for some of the tickets sold for preview performances. Many other audience members were still paying $140 or more on Sunday night. The complexity of “Spider-Man” – particularly its net-free flying sequences over the heads of audience members – has also stoked curiosity, as well as concern, after two actors were injured (one whose wrists were broken) performing aerial stunts this fall. And the show’s growing costs – it will likely cost more than $65 million in the end – has drawn attention given the lavish expense at a time of economic recession, and the difficulty and delays associated with raising money to mount the show. When Sunday’s performance did stop, the audience was warmly charitable for the most part. At one point in Act I, Mr. White asked for a round of applause for the actress Natalie Mendoza (who played the villainess Arachne) as she hung in mid-air during a six- minute pause. Later in the act, the actor Patrick Page (as the Green Goblin) improvised a bit by repeating some of the lyrics from his song “I’ll Take Manhattan.” “Spider-Man” is scheduled to open on Jan. 11, 2011. Concussion Sidelines ‘Spider-Man’ Actress

By PATRICK HEALY December 3, 2010

A lead actress in the new Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” suffered a concussion at the first preview performance on Sunday night when, standing offstage, she was struck in the head by a rope holding a piece of equipment, a spokesman for the actress said on Friday. The actress, Natalie Mendoza, who plays the villainess Arachne, did not perform on Thursday night and is not expected to return before Tuesday. Ms. Mendoza did perform at the second performance, on Wednesday night, against her doctor’s advice, said the spokesman, Shea Martin. A spokesman for the production, Rick Miramontez, said, “It was her choice, and she insisted on doing it.” The show’s director, Julie Taymor, and the lead producer, Michael Cohl, were informed before Wednesday’s performance that Ms. Mendoza had a concussion, Mr. Miramontez said. The role of Arachne involves several flying sequences, including one in the first act where Ms. Mendoza is spun upside-down. Mr. Cohl would not comment and Ms. Taymor did not respond to interview requests by mid-Friday afternoon. On Friday, representatives for the Actors’ Equity union and the New York State Department of Labor, which monitors safety in public performances, said they were looking into the accident. Ms. Mendoza is the third actor in “Spider-Man” to be hurt working on the production; during rehearsals this fall, one dancer broke his wrists after landing incorrectly during a flying stunt, while another actor injured his feet doing the same stunt. The actress did not report her injury on Sunday night; otherwise, Mr. Miramontez said, it would have been included in the stage manager’s post-performance report. The seriousness of the accident was also not clear; Mr. Martin said that she may have been hit by the equipment on the rope, as opposed to the rope itself, or that the rope may have been made by re-enforced materials. Ms. Mendoza, 30, is 5’6’’ tall with a slim, athletic build. At some point afterward Ms. Mendoza saw a doctor — the cast had the day off on Monday — and, late Tuesday morning, she sent out a message via Twitter that simply said, “Concussion.” She informed the production on Tuesday that she had a concussion; the spokesman, Mr. Miramontez, said it was noted in the stage manager’s report for the Tuesday rehearsal. On Wednesday, Ms. Mendoza told Ms. Taymor and the producers “that she strongly wished to perform” in the preview that night even though her doctor had advised against it, Mr. Miramontez said. The particulars of the discussion about allowing Ms. Mendoza to perform on Wednesday night remain unclear. Ms. Taymor was in rehearsal on Friday and interview requests for her were pending with Mr. Miramontez and her personal publicist, Chris Kanarick. On Thursday Ms. Mendoza fell ill, and the production announced that night that her understudy, America Olivo, was performing as Arachne through the weekend because Ms. Mendoza had a concussion. Ms. Olivo is now scheduled to play Arachne until at least Tuesday night; she did not reply to an e-mail request for comment on Friday. “Spider-Man” is the most technically complex show ever on Broadway, with 27 aerial sequences of characters flying and scores of pieces of moving scenery, some of which are among the biggest on a New York stage right now. Yet the show remains under-rehearsed: Ms. Taymor acknowledged in an interview in November that “the musical probably won’t be ready to do without stopping and fixing things in the first few performances.” Performances had already been delayed by two weeks in November, at a cost of a few million dollars in ticket revenue and rehearsal expenses. “Spider-Man” has cost $65 million, more than twice as much as any Broadway show in history; it is scheduled to open on Jan. 11, 2011. The actress declined an interview request made through Mr. Martin. He also declined a request to interview Ms. Mendoza’s doctor. A spokesman for the state Labor Department, Joseph Morrissey, issued a statement in response to questions: “The Department of Labor’s agreement with the production says that if an accident or equipment malfunction happens as it relates to an aerial performance, we need to be notified. The production has explained to us the details of the accident. They also indicated that they have made changes to prevent this type of accident from happening again. We plan to follow up regularly to ensure that these modifications are adequate.” Asked what changes had been made as a result of the accident to protect the actors and stagehands, Mr. Miramontez said that Mr. Cohl did not have specific details but “takes the issue of safety extremely seriously and everything is done to make sure that everyone involved in the show is safe and is knowledgeable about safety.” ‘Spider-Man’ Matinee Is Canceled

By PATRICK HEALY December 21, 2010

The producers of the new Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” canceled its Wednesday matinee to add safety precautions after a lead stunt actor playing the superhero sustained serious injuries from falling more than 20 feet into a basement beneath the stage during Monday night’s show. He was the fourth performer to be hurt working on “Spider-Man” since September. The accident prompted investigations by federal and state occupational safety inspectors, as well as by representatives from the Actors’ Equity union, who went to the Foxwoods Theater on Broadway on Tuesday, when no shows were scheduled, to examine equipment and meet with the production team. A spokesman for the production, Rick Miramontez, said on Tuesday that the accident, which caused the performer, Christopher Tierney, to be hospitalized, was the result of human error, without offering specifics. An Actors’ Equity spokeswoman confirmed that explanation, but also said the union would “step up” monitoring of the show. A spokesman for the state safety inspectors, however, said that he had no details on Tuesday about the accident’s cause or the new safety measures, and that their investigation was not complete. Mr. Miramontez said the show would be safe enough to perform on Wednesday night after the new measures were put in place. “The production knows exactly what happened at Monday’s performance, and it is being dealt with,” he wrote in an e-mail. “This is a maneuver that has been done hundreds, if not a thousand times, without incident, and additional redundancies are being put into place to ensure that will never happen again,” he wrote, referring to the accident. The stunt that Mr. Tierney was performing was, in fact, one of the less ambitious technical sequences; it was not one of the two dozen flying scenes that raised concerns about safety this fall, for instance. The $65 million production, the most expensive and technically ambitious in Broadway history, has faced several setbacks over the past few months; one of its lead actresses suffered a concussion at the first preview performance on Nov. 28, and two actors playing Spider-Man were injured by a sling-shot technique meant to propel them across the stage. The episode occurred during one of the final scenes of “Spider-Man,” when the masked superhero appears to be running toward the edge of an elevated platform above the stage as he tries to rescue the show’s heroine, Mary Jane Watson, who is tied and hanging under the platform. On Monday night, the usual stunt took place, with Mary Jane, played by Jennifer Damiano, dropping (attached by a wire) to the basement below the stage. But a moment later Mr. Tierney lost his footing and toppled off the platform. A person involved with the production said that Mr. Tierney had been properly attached to a tether, but that the tether was not affixed correctly to the equipment that was supposed to hold him in place. The theater immediately went dark, and some audience members reported hearing shouts for help before house lights were restored. An announcement made in the theater first said there would be a delay in the performance, then that the show was over. Mr. Tierney was quickly taken from the theater on a gurney and transported by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital Center. An experienced dancer with two decades of credits, Mr. Tierney suffered broken ribs and internal bleeding, among other injuries, according to people involved with the production who spoke on condition of anonymity because only Mr. Miramontez and the producers and creators are supposed to speak publicly. Mr. Tierney was listed in serious condition at Bellevue on Tuesday, a hospital spokesman said; he was conscious and receiving well-wishers, including some fellow actors and Julie Taymor, the director of “Spider-Man,” who had previously worked with Mr. Tierney on her film “Across the Universe.” In response to interview requests, Ms. Taymor released a statement through a spokesman: “An accident like this is obviously heartbreaking for our entire team and, of course, to me personally. I am so thankful that Chris is going to be all right and is in great spirits. Nothing is more important than the safety of our ‘Spider-Man’ family, and we’ll continue to do everything in our power to protect the cast and crew.” Leo Rosales, the spokesman for the state safety inspectors, said he did not know if the tethering attached to Mr. Tierney was one of the technical elements that the inspectors reviewed and approved during several visits to the theater in November. “All I can say right now is that we’ve agreed that the producers will provide us with a write-up on the safety protocols and procedures that they are going to put in place immediately,” he said. Asked if the state would allow performances to resume on Wednesday night if it were not able to verify and test the new safety protocols, Mr. Rosales said the state did not have the authority to shut down the show while its investigation was still under way. The production began preview performances in late November after state inspectors announced that the show — which includes aerial sequences that are unprecedented for Broadway — was safe for public performances. During its first three weeks of performances this month, several technical problems were smoothed out, most dealing with scene transitions and some of the flying. But some theatergoers have taken to blogs, Twitter and Facebook to criticize the quality of the script, music (which is by Bono and the Edge of U2) and acting; on Friday the producers announced that “Spider-Man” was delaying its official opening by four weeks to Feb. 7 so that creative changes could be made. The show has been selling extremely well daily at the box office, grossing more than $1 million for its six performances last week; the next two weeks, through New Year’s Day, are among the most lucrative for big brand-name Broadway musicals like “Spider-Man,” which tend to attract tourists. ‘Spider-Man’ Producers Say Delay Is Justified

By PATRICK HEALY January 14, 2011

The producers and director of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” defended on Friday their decision to postpone the musical’s opening by another five weeks, saying that a show of this unprecedented complexity could not unfold according to Broadway tradition. New productions usually have four weeks of preview performances to work out kinks and not the record-setting 15 of “Spider-Man” before critics review it. But several veteran producers were quite critical of the move, saying “Spider-Man” was setting a bad precedent by having audience members pay $140 to $275 for the best seats at a show that is still undergoing script, music, sound and lighting work, and that still lacks a big closing number. Some, breaking the customary silence that producers tend to extend to their colleagues, also charged that the delay was a ploy to make more money before critics offered their judgments. As it stands, “Spider-Man” will have had roughly 110 preview performances before its new March 15 opening. The record for a musical was 71, set in 1991 by “Nick & Nora,” and the record for a play was 97, set in 1969 by “A Teaspoon Every Four Hours.” (That play, starring Jackie Mason, closed immediately after its opening night.) By its March 15 opening, if that holds, “Spider-Man” will have run longer in previews than some Broadway musicals have run in their entirety this season, like “The Scottsboro Boys” (94 total performances) and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (99). Michael Cohl, the lead producer of the $65 million “Spider-Man,” the most expensive musical in Broadway history, said the creators were still working on a splashy ending, including a major new flying sequence that was tested on Friday for state safety inspectors. He said the show’s composers, Bono and the Edge, of the band U2, were reworking music and lyrics. (Bono, however, has left New York; his return date is unclear.) And Mr. Cohl disputed the accusation that the opening-night delay — the fifth — was a tactic to gin up more publicity and sell more tickets. Despite bad press, “Spider- Man” was last week’s highest-grossing Broadway show. “The best idea to market the show would be to open,” Mr. Cohl said in a telephone interview. “Our view is the same as Ernest and Julio Gallo: ‘It’s simply, no opening before its time.’” (A similar phrase was made famous by the winemaker Paul Masson.) “Listen, this is a very different kind of Broadway show: a rock ’n’ roll circus drama, a piece of action theater,” he continued. Referring to the show’s Tony Award-winning director, Julie Taymor, he added: “A lot of theater people thought Julie was nuts when they heard what she was doing with ‘The Lion King,’ before anyone saw the final product. We’re not bound by old expectations of when to open or not to open. We’ll open when the show is ready to open.” Mr. Cohl and the show’s other lead producer, Jeremiah Harris, said they had not seriously considered more drastic moves like putting the show on hiatus; Mr. Cohl estimated the creators needed about 90 hours of more work and rehearsals, much of which would be on the ending. Mr. Harris said that the creators needed audience members seeing the show to gauge laughter, applause and silences — and then make fixes accordingly — while Mr. Cohl said that the show was selling extremely well and that audience members were enjoying themselves over all. “Our sales are strong, they continue to be strong, and that’s the best news of all,” Mr. Cohl said. “I think that says something about what’s happening in the theater every night. We want the show to be great, and we believe we can get to that point while we continue to hold performances.” Ms. Taymor, in a separate phone interview, said that she was “finessing and finishing off some major elements of the story” and clarifying parts of Act II, which some audience members have criticized on theater blogs, Twitter and Facebook. “I’m not changing the story, I’m trying to make it better,” Ms. Taymor said. She added that characters like the spider villainess, Arachne, and the so-called Geek Chorus of narrators, as well as a number entitled “Deeply Furious” that involves several female spiders dancing in high heels, would remain in the show with refinements, despite much drubbing by the public. Usually such details are not part of the cultural conversation beyond Broadway insiders, but “Spider-Man” has broken wide across the public, largely because of the popularity of the comic-book hero at its center, the involvement of Bono and Edge and the recent injuries to four of the show’s performers. Ms. Taymor, for her part, said she was trying to block out all of the public and news media attention on “Spider-Man,” which has become a staple of late-night comedy and was discussed excitedly this week by Glenn Beck on his radio program and on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. But for all the enthusiasm that those radio and television hosts have exhibited toward “Spider-Man,” some veterans of Broadway show making expressed bewilderment over the delays. “What the ‘Spider-Man’ people are doing is completely cynical,” said Jeffrey Seller, the Tony Award-winning producer of “In the Heights” and “Rent.” “It’s an end run around an actual opening night that would shine a tremendous amount of negative light on their superhero, while instead they’re riding on all the nonreview press the show is receiving because of its delays. “With eight performances a week, you can only rehearse on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for four hours each because of union rules and crew work, unless you want to pay overtime,” Mr. Seller continued. “If you want to write a new three-minute number, stage it, orchestrate it and tech it, the whole process takes at least a week. If they were serious about improving the show, they would shut down and do the work. But that would cost money.” Emanuel Azenberg, another Tony-winning producer, has mounted shows for decades that had long preview periods and short ones. But he said “Spider-Man” had become a watershed. “The producers are getting endless free publicity out of these delays,” Mr. Azenberg said. Ms. Taymor justified the delays by saying that the work being done was the same that most shows do during out-of-town runs, which “Spider-Man” did not have. “In a way,” she said, “we’re still out of town, and we’re coming in for our five weeks of previews starting on February 7,” formerly opening night. Some theatergoers also expressed exasperation on Friday. “This is the second time I thought I had tickets to see a frozen production, only to learn that I’m only going to see another preview,” said Steve Loucks, who writes about theater on his blog, SteveonBroadway. “They need to reconsider what they’re charging for preview tickets.” Years ago, Broadway previews cost less. Several New York theater critics expressed chagrin on Friday that a musical had been running for 15 weeks of previews but that they had been unable to offer reviews that might inform theatergoers before they bought tickets to it. A few critics have published reviews, though; the “Spider-Man” team has said that critics should not review until invited to the production. Joe Dziemianowicz, the theater critic of The Daily News, wrote a column on Friday that asked, in the headline, if audiences and critics were “being played for suckers” by the producers, though he added in an interview that he was not sure when he would review the show. “One concern I have is that I can see having reviews come out by dribs and drabs, which just dissipates the impact of a critical consensus,” Mr. Dziemianowicz said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the producers want that.” The Associated Press theater critic said he would wait until invited to review; The Village Voice critic said he was inclined to wait; and The New York Post’s critic said she would be conferring with her editors. Asked if The New York Times would review “Spider-Man” before press performances in March, Jonathan Landman, the paper’s culture editor, said: “We’re thinking about it. When a show seems comfortable with endless previews, then you have no choice but to think seriously about when to review it.” ‘Spider-Man’ Isn’t Just The Talk Of Broadway, It’s The Punch Line

By PATRICK HEALY February 5, 2011

Joan Rivers gave a suggestion to the director Julie Taymor the other night: “Hire a stunt person to fall on someone every three or four weeks — that’ll keep audiences showing up.” Like talk show hosts, magazine editors, entertainment bloggers, other comics, even an animation studio in Taiwan, Ms. Rivers is getting a lot of mileage out of the new Broadway show “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” She was there backstage at the Foxwoods Theater on Wednesday, schmoozing with the cast and Ms. Taymor, who is directing the show, to develop more material for her stand-up act, which lately has begun with a moment of silence for “those Americans risking their lives daily — in ‘Spider-Man’ the musical,” a reference to the four performers who have been injured working on the show. “Spider-Man” has not even officially opened yet. The date has been delayed five times to fix myriad problems, with Sunday afternoon being preview performance No. 66 and the opening planned for Monday night being pushed back five more weeks to March 15. But this $65 million musical has become a national object of pop culture fascination — more so, perhaps, than any show in Broadway history. Starting with Conan O’Brien’s spoof of Spider-Man warbling in rhyme on Nov. 30, two nights after the musical’s problem-plagued first preview, the show has been lampooned on every major late-night comedy show and by The Onion, which portrayed the producers as still being optimistic about the show despite a nuclear bomb’s detonating during a preview. Recently, Steve Martin slyly referred to it in a series of tweets about watching the “Spider-Man” movies at home. “Settling in to watch Spiderman 3 on deluxe edition DVD, but I fell from hanging cables in screening room. 2 hour delay,” he wrote. Media celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Glenn Beck and the hosts of “Morning Joe” have all raved about the musical, especially Mr. Beck, who said in an interview on Friday that he had seen it four times. Mr. Beck has framed its appeal on his radio broadcast as a face-off between regular Americans and cultural snobs (i.e., liberals). In the interview, however, he was more fanboy than fire breather, rattling off plot points and design elements with the practiced eye of a Sardi’s regular. “The story line is right on the money for today, which is to be your better self, that you can spiral into darkness or” — here he quoted one of the show’s anthemic songs — “you can rise above,” said Mr. Beck, who estimated that he sees a dozen shows a year. “In fact, I just wrote an e-mail to Julie” — Ms. Taymor — “about how much I loved the new ending.” Last month, “Spider-Man” became the first Broadway show since “The Producers” to land on the cover of The New Yorker; the cartoon, by Barry Blitt, who also did “The Producers” cover in 2001, showed several injured Spider-Men in a hospital ward. “For our cover we always ask ourselves, would our one million readers know what we were making reference to?” said Francoise Mouly, art editor of The New Yorker. “But in no time at all, ‘Spider-Man’ has gotten enough notoriety that we knew the cover would make people laugh. Even the show’s producers laughed; they’ve been hounding us to buy copies of the artwork.” If most theater artists and producers are intensely protective of their shows, those at “Spider-Man” have a peculiar financial interest in being mocked. The musical, which marries a hugely popular comic book brand with music by Bono and the Edge of U2, is grossing about $1.3 million a week in ticket sales, the most of any Broadway show except the blockbuster “Wicked,” despite relatively little advertising and no major reviews yet. By all accounts, including from inside “Spider-Man,” the show is a hot seller week to week — rather than building a huge eight-figure advance commensurate with its $65 million cost, which would suggest staying power. And that popularity has been fueled by the echo chamber of jokes, dinner party chatter and media attention among the fashionable and their hangers-on surrounding this technically ambitious show. For all that, of course, there are some adults and children who simply have an attachment to Spider-Man, who want to see people swing from webs, or who think that the show might make for enjoyable live theater. “Our sales are strong; they continue to be strong, which is terrific news, but I can’t give you one clear reason why the show becomes such a draw every night after night,” Michael Cohl, the lead producer, said in an interview. “What I know is that people are talking about ‘Spider-Man’ to what seems like an unprecedented degree.” Philip J. Smith, the chairman of the Shubert Organization, which owns and books 17 of Broadway’s 40 theaters, said he had never seen a show become such a curiosity. “It has become a phenomenon for reasons, it seems, that have very little to do with the show itself,” Mr. Smith said. (“Spider-Man” is not in a Shubert theater.) The injuries to the four performers generated the bulk of the publicity for the show this winter, including the departure of one of its stars, Natalie Mendoza, who sustained a concussion while backstage and left the production in late December after signing a confidentiality agreement and being paid an undisclosed amount. But if the axiom that all publicity is good publicity has benefited the musical, what happens to “Spider-Man” when the publicity dies down? Broadway shows become hits, by and large, because of word-of-mouth praise and excitement among so-called tastemakers, be they critics who championed plays like “Red” and “August: Osage County,” parents who tell their neighbors about the great time that the children had at “The Lion King” or “Wicked,” or wealthy older theatergoers who tell their friends about the sentimental fun of “Jersey Boys” or “Mary Poppins.” A crucial question for “Spider-Man” is this: If tourists and parents with children head to the musical so they can have bragging rights at dinner parties or on the playground, will that translate into their friends going to see the show — once the laughs have died down — and will they themselves go back a second time or more, as many “Wicked” fans do? Some veteran theater producers say no. “The $65 million price tag and the circuslike atmosphere of people getting injured or the show having technical problems, all of that is creating interest in the short term,” said Elizabeth I. McCann, who has been producing on Broadway since the mid-1970s and has won multiple Tony Awards, mostly for plays. “But at some point, I think, people are going to say that the emperor has no clothes where the so-called musical spectacle of ‘Spider-Man’ is concerned, and the adult audience will start to lose interest.” The musical’s producers are trying to head off such a possibility by welcoming another set of tastemakers — celebrities — some of whom are friends of Bono and the Edge. Jon Bon Jovi, David Bowie, Kevin and Nick Jonas, Julian Lennon, Sean Penn and Jerry Seinfeld are among those who have seen the show. Kevin Jonas tweeted afterward: “Just saw spiderman on broadway so awesome! Everyone go see it.” Ms. Taymor and Bono, who are both close to Ms. Winfrey, cooperated with her on a long article in O: The Oprah Magazine. Ms. Taymor has juggled giving interviews and greeting celebrity visitors like Ms. Rivers while continuing to make changes to the show, but she said that she had largely blocked out the cultural noise surrounding “Spider-Man.” “I took off my Google alerts on the show a while ago because a lot of the jokes and comments out there are negative, and I thought it’s too hard to work under this kind of vitriol,” she said in an interview. On Wednesday night, Ms. Taymor looked queasy after Ms. Rivers suggested dropping performers from the rafters for thrills. (Ms. Rivers also suggested selling umbrellalike helmets to make more money.) “Of course, someone’s told you that before,” Ms. Rivers said. “No,” Ms. Taymor said, before walking away, “you’re the first.” Theater Review: Good Vs. Evil, Hanging By A Thread

“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”: The musical, whose superhero star performs aerial and acrobatic feats while vanquishing villains, is in previews at the Foxwoods Theater. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

By BEN BRANTLEY February 7, 2011 Finally, near the end of the first act of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the audience at the Foxwoods Theater on Saturday night got what it had truly been waiting for, whether it knew it or not. Calamity struck, and it was a real-life (albeit small) calamity — not some tedious, confusing tripe involving a pretty girl dangling from a skyscraper and supervillains laying siege to Manhattan. And not the more general and seriously depressing disaster that was the sum of the mismatched parts that had been assembled onstage. No, an honest-to-gosh, show-stopping glitch occurred, just as the title character of this new musical was about to vanquish or be vanquished by the evil Green Goblin. Never fully explained “mechanical difficulties” were announced by an amplified voice (not immediately distinguishable from the other amplified voices we had been hearing for what felt like forever), as the actors in the scene deflated before our eyes. And for the first time that night something like genuine pleasure spread through the house. That glee soon took the form of spontaneous, nigh-ecstatic applause, a sound unheard in the previous hour. After vamping on a green fake piano (don’t ask), Patrick Page (who plays the Goblin with a gusto unshared by any other member of the cast) ad- libbed a warning to Reeve Carney (who stars as Spider-Man), who had been awkwardly marking time by pretending to drink Champagne. “You gotta be careful,” Mr. Page said. “You’re gonna fly over the heads of the audience, you know. I hear they dropped a few of them.” “Roar,” went the audience, like a herd of starved, listless lions, roused into animation by the arrival of feeding time. Everyone, it seemed, understood Mr. Page’s reference to the injuries that have been incurred by cast and crew members during the long (and officially still far from over) preview period for this $65 million musical. Permission to laugh had been granted, and a bond had temporarily been forged between a previously baffled audience and the beleaguered souls onstage. All subsequent performances of “Spider-Man” should include at least one such moment. Actively letting theatergoers in on the national joke that this problem-plagued show has become helps make them believe that they have a reason to be there. This production should play up regularly and resonantly the promise that things could go wrong. Because only when things go wrong in this production does it feel remotely right — if, by right, one means entertaining. So keep the fear factor an active part of the show, guys, and stock the Foxwoods gift shops with souvenir crash helmets and T-shirts that say “I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and lived.” Otherwise, a more appropriate slogan would be “I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and slept.” I’m not kidding. The sheer ineptitude of this show, inspired by the Spider-Man comic books, loses its shock value early. After 15 or 20 minutes, the central question you keep asking yourself is likely to change from “How can $65 million look so cheap?” to “How long before I’m out of here?” Directed by Julie Taymor, who wrote the show’s book with Glen Berger, and featuring songs by U2’s Bono and the Edge, “Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst. I would like to acknowledge here that “Spider-Man” doesn’t officially open until March 15; at least that’s the last date I heard. But since this show was looking as if it might settle into being an unending work in progress — with Ms. Taymor playing Michelangelo to her notion of a Sistine Chapel on Broadway — my editors and I decided I might as well check out “Spider-Man” around Monday, the night it was supposed to have opened before its latest postponement. You are of course entitled to disagree with our decision. But from what I saw on Saturday night, “Spider-Man” is so grievously broken in every respect that it is beyond repair. Fans of Ms. Taymor’s work on the long-running musical “The Lion King,” adapted from the animated Walt Disney feature, will have to squint charitably to see evidence of her talent. True, signature Taymor touches like airborne puppets, elaborate masks and perspective-skewing sets (George Tsypin is the scenic designer) are all on hand. But they never connect into a comprehensible story with any momentum. Often you feel as if you were watching the installation of Christmas windows at a fancy department store. At other times the impression is of being on a soundstage where a music video is being filmed in the early 1980s. (Daniel Ezralow’s choreography is pure vintage MTV.) Nothing looks truly new, including the much-vaunted flying sequences in which some poor sap is strapped into an all-too-visible harness and hoisted uneasily above the audience. (Aren’t they doing just that across the street in “Mary Poppins”?) This is especially unfortunate, since Ms. Taymor and her collaborators have spoken frequently about blazing new frontiers with “Spider-Man,” of venturing where no theater artist (pardon me, I mean artiste) has dared to venture before. I’m assuming that frontier is supposed to exist somewhere between the second and third dimensions. “Part of the balance we’ve been trying to strike is how ‘comic book’ to go and how ‘human’ to go,” Ms. Taymor has said about her version of the adventures of a nerdy teenager who acquires superhuman powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. Anyway, there are lots of flat, cardboardish sets, which could easily be recycled for high school productions of “Grease” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and giant multipanel video projections (by Kyle Cooper). That takes care of the two-dimensional part. The human aspect has been assigned to the flesh-and-blood cast members, and it is a Sisyphean duty. Some wear grotesque masks that bring to mind hucksters on sidewalks handing out promotional material for fantasy-theme restaurants. (Eiko Ishioka is the costume designer.) Those whose own features are visible include — in addition to Mr. Carney (looking bewildered and beautiful as Spider-Man and his conflicted alter ego, Peter Parker) — a strained Jennifer Damiano as Mary Jane Watson, Peter’s spunky kind-of girlfriend, and T. V. Carpio as Arachne, a web-weaving spider-woman of Greco-Roman myth who haunts Peter’s dreams before breaking into his reality. (I get the impression that Arachne, as the ultimate all-controlling artist, is the only character who much interests Ms. Taymor, but that doesn’t mean that she makes sense.) There is also the Geek Chorus (Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Mat Devine, Alice Lee), a quartet of adolescent comic-book devotees, who would appear to be either creating or commenting on the plot, but in any case serve only to obscure it even further. They discuss the heady philosophical implications of Spider-Man’s identity while making jokes in which the notion of free will is confused with the plot of the movie “Free Willy.” For a story that has also inspired hit action movies, it is remarkably static in this telling. (A lot of the plot-propelling fights are merely reported to us.) There are a couple of picturesque set pieces involving Arachne and her chorus of spider-women and one stunner of a cityscape that suggests the streets of Manhattan as seen from the top of the Chrysler Building. The songs by Bono and the Edge are rarely allowed to take full, attention-capturing form. Mostly they blur into a sustained electronic twang of varying volume, increasing and decreasing in intensity, like a persistent headache. A loud ballad of existential angst has been written for Peter, who rasps dejectedly, “I’d be myself if I knew who I’d become.” That might well be the official theme song of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” ‘Spider-Man’ Is Cited Again For Violations

By KEVIN FLYNN March 4, 2011

Federal regulators on Friday cited “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” for three serious workplace safety violations, though the proposed fine of $12,600 is unlikely to faze a production that has already run through $65 million. The citations stem from four instances last year in which cast members of the Broadway musical were hurt, including one in which an actor, Christopher Tierney, sustained broken ribs and a hairline skull fracture, among other injuries, when he plunged, untethered, from a platform on stage. The citations, from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, were issued to the production company for the show, 8 Legged Productions L.L.C. It has the right to challenge them. Last month, state officials cited the show, playing at the Foxwoods Theater, for two workplace safety violations that did not carry fines. In a statement, the federal agency said the employees had been “exposed to the hazards of falls or being struck during flying routines because of improperly adjusted or unsecured safety harnesses.” Additionally, the agency found that unguarded “open-side floors” lacked fall protection, and that not enough had been done to shield employees from being struck by “moving overhead rigging components.” OSHA issues serious citations when, according to its review, lapses have led to hazards carrying a “substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result.” Rick Miramontez, a spokesman for the production, which has added multiple procedures to prevent other injuries, said the show “remains in compliance with all government agencies and continues to adhere to all safety protocols.” “Spider-Man” has been troubled by issues that have led its producers to postpone its opening five times. It is now scheduled to open on March 15, though staff members have acknowledged that that date may also change. Some of the delays have been related to the technical difficulty of the flying sequences being tried in the theater. None of the injuries occurred during flights in which cast members swing out over the audience. ‘Spider-Man’ Director May Face Her Own Exit

By PATRICK HEALY and KEVIN FLYNN March 7, 2011

The producers of Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” were negotiating on Monday with their director, Julie Taymor, for her to work with a newly expanded creative team to fix the critically derided $65 million musical or possibly leave the show, according to people who work on “Spider-Man” or have been briefed on the negotiations. The artistic direction ahead for “Spider-Man” — twice as expensive as any show in Broadway history — involves more decisions than just Ms. Taymor’s future, according to these people, who spoke anonymously because the producers have insisted that no information be disclosed about the talks. The producers and Ms. Taymor and her co-creators, Bono and the Edge of U2, are also discussing how extensively to overhaul the script and music; how many outside consultants should be hired, and who; and when to open the show, which set a record at its Sunday matinee for the most preview performances ever, its 98th. (The previous record was set in 1969 by Jackie Mason’s “A Teaspoon Every Four Hours.”) Ken Sunshine, one of the spokesmen for the production, said in response to several questions on Monday night: “We are not commenting on speculation.” The opening night for “Spider-Man” has already been delayed five times; the current opening date, March 15, seems all but certain to fall, since by Monday night theater critics had not been invited to review it (normally invitations are sent about two weeks before). All of the people who spoke about the negotiations said that the producers now viewed a March 15 opening as unlikely. Many critics, in fact, issued reviews after the previously scheduled opening night of Feb. 7. Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic of The New York Times, wrote that “Spider-Man” may “rank among the worst” musicals in history. For all the decisions to be made, the role of Ms. Taymor is the most freighted one. A Tony Award winner for the musical blockbuster “The Lion King” and regarded in some quarters as a visually creative genius, Ms. Taymor was recruited in 2002 as director by Bono and the Edge. The three have stuck together through the thrills of giving fresh life to the Spider-Man story in their dialogue-writing sessions, the near-bankruptcy of the show in 2009, and through the long preview period, which was marred by serious injuries to two actors during performances in December. The people who spoke about the negotiations said that, throughout Monday, they were not sure if Ms. Taymor would stay or go as director. One person briefed on the negotiations said that Bono, who has been away for much of the show’s preview period, had taken a direct role in the talks. What is certain, the people said, was that the producers saw the potential for major changes to the musical, which they hope to mount for years in productions around the world, and that Ms. Taymor either needed to accept help in making those changes or face a different outcome, potentially her exit from the show. The names of multiple directors, choreographers and playwrights have been ricocheting around the Broadway community for days now. It was not clear on Monday who would be hired. By turns frustrated and determined, exhausted and engaged, Ms. Taymor has also alternated between acknowledging that the production had serious artistic flaws and insisting that she have more of a chance to improve it, the people who spoke in interviews said. Ms. Taymor, in one of her few public comments about “Spider-Man” since her last stretch of interviews in mid-January, said in a speech on Wednesday that she felt she was “in the crucible and the fire of transformation” with “Spider-Man.” Addressing more than 1,000 people at the TED 2011 conference in Long Beach, Calif., Ms. Taymor indicated that she planned to continue working on the show, describing the creative process as a “trial by fire” for herself and her company. She did not suggest that she might leave the production. Of “Spider-Man,” she said in her speech: “Anyone who creates knows — when it’s not quite there. Where it hasn’t quite become the phoenix or the burnt char. And I am right there.” ‘Spider-Man’ Overhaul Forces A 3- Month Delay

By PATRICK HEALY March 8, 2011

The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are planning a significant overhaul of the $65 million Broadway musical that would involve shutting down performances for two to three weeks, as well as delaying its scheduled opening on March 15 for about three months, according to people who work on “Spider-Man” or were briefed on the producers’ plans. The precise dates for the shutdown — needed to give the cast a break and to hold new rehearsals — have not been set, but they are expected to cover late April and early May, the people said. They spoke Tuesday on the condition of anonymity because the producers were working on the details and wanted to disclose the plans themselves. An official announcement was expected this week. The new opening night was also not clear as of late Tuesday; a shift to a time around the Tony Awards, which are June 12, could prove controversial among Broadway producers who are bothered by the media and public interest that has focused on “Spider- Man” instead of their shows. “Spider-Man” has been among the highest-grossing shows on Broadway since beginning preview performances on Nov. 28, taking in $1.28 million last week. Who would oversee the creative changes has been an open question. The producers on Tuesday continued negotiating with their director, Julie Taymor, and her fellow creators, U2’s Bono and the Edge, about the composition of the artistic team going forward and about whether it would continue to include Ms. Taymor, according to the people briefed on the producers’ planning. The musical’s press representative, Rick Miramontez, said on Tuesday, “Opening night remains scheduled for March 15.” An official start in June would be the sixth delay to the opening of “Spider-Man” in the show’s long history, which began in 2002, when Marvel Entertainment reached out to the Broadway producer Tony Adams (“Victor/Victoria”) about developing a musical. The endeavor has survived Mr. Adams’s death in 2005, a near-bankruptcy in 2009 and a number of technical challenges involving its aerial stunts, which contributed to injuries involving four performers during the fall and winter and led to several findings of state and federal safety code violations. “Spider-Man” completed its 99th preview performance on Tuesday night, more than any other show in history; it is also twice as expensive as the next big-budget Broadway show, “Shrek the Musical.” No one has worked on “Spider-Man” more intensely than Ms. Taymor, who is its director, one of its script writers, its mask designer and far and away its chief creative force. But the producers have concluded that the show needs fresh eyes and ideas to improve in light of sharply negative reviews from most of the nation’s theater critics last month. The producers have asked Ms. Taymor to work with new collaborators or face another resolution, possibly even leaving. The producers have reached out to at least two Broadway musical directors, Christopher Ashley (a Tony Award nominee for “Memphis” and “The Rocky Horror Show”) and Philip William McKinley (“The Boy From Oz”), about coming aboard, the people said. Precipitous Fall For ‘Spider-Man’ Director

By PATRICK HEALY March 9, 2011

It was 1996 when Disney Theatrical Productions took a chance on a little-known director of experimental theater named Julie Taymor. They handed her a musical based on their hit film, “The Lion King,” and they found themselves with a billion-dollar hit. Ms. Taymor became the theater world’s star auteur. Now, all of a sudden, she is something else entirely. After nine years of work, Ms. Taymor is stepping aside as director of the most expensive and technically ambitious musical ever on Broadway, the $65 million “Spider- Man: Turn Off the Dark,” its producers announced on Wednesday night. They named a new director to replace her and a script doctor to rewrite the show, as they prepared to overhaul the production during the next three months — including adding two new songs by the composers, U2’s Bono and the Edge. On Wednesday night, the producers, along with Bono and the Edge, told the “Spider-Man” cast that Ms. Taymor was out. According to one person who was there, Bono said that Ms. Taymor would still be part of the show, but that he felt sad she would not be there day to day. The producers told the cast members to put on their “game faces.” Friends and colleagues of Ms. Taymor’s said she was being pushed aside because of sharply negative reviews by theater critics last month and because she would not make changes that the producers and her fellow creators, Bono and the Edge, had sought. Ms. Taymor did not include a comment in the press release that the producers issued — a sign of the discord among them. A spokeswoman for Ms. Taymor said on Wednesday night that she was “not commenting at this time.” How Ms. Taymor went from artistic genius, a reputation that helped secure all that money for “Spider-Man,” to a girl falling from the sky (to paraphrase a song in the show) is not only the stuff of Greek drama but also sure to become theatrical legend. Broadway has exploded into a big-budget, star-driven, high-priced marketplace; Ms. Taymor is a proud perfectionist, but more of a visual scene-setter than a storyteller, and her outré approach to a classic superhero story and such a huge commercial product helped speed her undoing. According to four of her colleagues, Ms. Taymor boxed herself into a corner with the producers in the last few weeks by rebuffing their requests to allow outsiders to make changes to the show. She would not meet with some of them, and she did not act on suggestions for improvements; at one feedback session with the cast, some actors argued for strengthening the central love story between Peter Parker and M. J. Watson, but Ms. Taymor insisted, “It’s there.” The Edge, Bono and the producers also expected that she would make far-reaching changes in the show’s critically panned Act II, but after attending recent performances, they concluded that she lacked the objectivity to ruthlessly reshape the show. Friends of Ms. Taymor, a Tony Award winner for best director and costume design for “The Lion King,” described her as anguished and distraught. “Julie’s an extremely sensitive person, and she has always felt like a mother to her plays, a mother to her characters,” Jeffrey Horowitz, a friend and artistic director of New York’s Theater for a New Audience, said Wednesday. “This is like a mother being taken away from her family. She loves that family. She wants that family.” The new director of “Spider-Man,” the producers said, will be Philip William McKinley, who previously directed the Hugh Jackman musical “The Boy From Oz” in 2003 as well as several Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses. Early in his career, he worked as a performer in Las Vegas, a city known for the sort of thrilling spectacle that the producers want more of in “Spider-Man,” not to mention a profitable tourist hub that figures prominently in their plan to make the show eventually profitable. With 101 preview performances now under its belt, a record and far more than the typical 30, “Spider-Man” is now so troubled that the producers plan to shut down the show for two to three weeks in midspring. That would give time to Mr. McKinley and the script doctor, the playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman”), to make changes. Opening night, which had been set for March 15, will be delayed a sixth time, to early summer, the producers said. The ouster of any director is tumultuous for a Broadway show, but Ms. Taymor’s creative DNA is embedded especially deep in “Spider-Man,” which makes it far from clear what the show will become in Mr. McKinley’s very different creative hands. Bono and the Edge, for their part, are expected to play a greater role; one of their songs is expected to be a new Act II opener that reflects Peter Parker’s struggle between being a young man and being Spider-man. Currently the act begins with an odd-fitting ode to the greatness of Spider-man, replete with dancing clergy and Columbia University professors. Ms. Taymor’s fall from favor unfolded through the fall and winter, and its origin lay in what most people regard as her greatest asset: Her vision of boundary-breaking theater. In interviews she made clear that her main interest was telling a mythlike story about a human struggling with super powers, rendered with hallucinatory effects like technically elaborate flying sequences and set changes. The lead producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, were all for it as long as the show was a rollicking spectacle, a Cirque du Soleil show with a script, that would regularly sell out the Foxwoods Theater. The musical costs more than $1 million to run each week, believed to be the highest in history, with any profit going to royalties and repayment of the $65 million capitalization cost. Not only was Ms. Taymor one of the creators and the director, she also wrote the script with the playwright Glen Berger, designed the masks and was closely involved with the costume design. Mr. Cohl, a rock concert promoter, was her primary contact; he was a relative newcomer to Broadway, installed by Bono after the previous producers left the show nearly bankrupt. People on the show said he and Mr. Harris lost patience with Ms. Taymor’s search for a new form of theater when, really, others involved in the show were content to be in the tradition of Broadway spectacles like “The Phantom of the Opera” or “Miss Saigon.” As the March 15 opening approached, the two U2 musicians and the producers became convinced that Ms. Taymor was not making or even considering the wholesale changes they thought were necessary. This week, the producers told Ms. Taymor she had to accept outsiders with fresh eyes and ideas or step aside; she, in turn, defended her work and argued that the current production reflected what all of them had long been working toward. According to two investors in the show, Mr. Cohl said to them that he told Ms. Taymor on Monday that she had to leave the show. A woman answering Ms. Taymor’s phone on Wednesday referred questions to her publicist. Some of Ms. Taymor’s fans said on Wednesday that they were shocked by the turn of events for a director whose work, including “Juan Darién” and “The Green Bird,” and her production of “The Magic Flute” at the Met, represented a singular, dreamlike imagination. “I think the world of Julie and find the entire saga beyond sad,” said Stuart Oken, a Broadway producer (“The Addams Family”) who worked with Ms. Taymor on “The Lion King” when he was an executive at Disney Theatrical. “She dreams on a large canvas, and our community is richer for that ambition. It certainly worked out well on ‘The Lion King.’ ” ‘Spider-Man’: Turn On The Changes

By PATRICK HEALY March 10, 2011

Many of Julie Taymor’s signature touches in Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” would be cut or altered in the producers’ new creative plan, which includes scaling back the villainess Arachne, dropping the “Deeply Furious” number of shoe-wearing spider-ladies, and reshaping the Geek Chorus of narrators, according to three people who work on the show and were briefed Thursday on plans. The producers announced Wednesday that Ms. Taymor was stepping aside from the $65 million production because of schedule conflicts, though she will still be billed as its director and a script writer. Taking over to reshape the show will be the theater and circus director Philip William McKinley (Broadway’s “Boy From Oz”) and the playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Friends and colleagues of Ms. Taymor have said she was forced out because she would not make extensive changes that the producers wanted. The producers have now decided that they will shut down the show sometime this spring, but only for a short period, and they want artists with fresh perspectives to oversee the changes. According to the three people aware of the producers’ plan, who spoke anonymously because it is confidential, the central love story of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson will be enhanced, and Arachne — who now dominates Act II — will have her stage time reduced. The producers also want to cut “Deeply Furious,” which has been widely denounced by theater critics. The show’s composers, Bono and the Edge of U2, are writing at least two new songs, one of which will be for the start of Act II; the second may replace “Deeply Furious.” Additional flying sequences are being considered, and the story arc of the villain Green Goblin is also expected to be clarified. What happens to him in Act II is among several confusing plot points. Lawyers for Ms. Taymor and the production continued negotiations on Thursday about her contract, which gives her broad creative control over the musical. A spokeswoman for Ms. Taymor declined to comment. Broadway group sales offices were being inundated Thursday with complaints and concerns from organizers who had planned trips to New York to see “Spider-Man” after its previously scheduled March 15 opening. “Buyers want answers now, and most want to protect themselves with other shows and many want refunds,” said Stephanie Lee, president of Group Sales Box Office. A Broadway Superlative For All The Wrong Reasons

By PATRICK HEALY and KEVIN FLYNN March 13, 2011

After a year of false starts the producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” proclaimed in January that their Broadway musical would absolutely open on a newly set date, March 15. Most of the cast and crew members weren’t buying it. “Yeah right,” someone scribbled backstage on an opening notice, which was soon taken down. Later another note went up, describing the March 15 event as a gala. “What does this mean?” someone scrawled. With the announcement last week that the “Spider-Man” opening was being delayed for a sixth time, until summer, the drama behind the now $70-million-and-counting musical now seems like theater of the absurd, where words like “opening” mean nothing, and rules don’t exist. Which makes sense, in a way, because the “Spider-Man” creators have long said they could make not just a hit, but a groundbreaking new art form, by bucking Broadway’s rules. “‘Spider-Man’ will succeed,” the lead producer, Michael Cohl, said in August, “because we’re thinking outside the box.” And so budgets were busted as spending soared. The show rented the Foxwoods Theater for almost two years before performances started, an eon in a Broadway timetable. Julie Taymor signed on as director and co-writer of the script, a dual role that many on Broadway consider risky. Rather than take a strong hand in managing the production, as producers usually do, Mr. Cohl saw his job as aiding and abetting her vision. And during much of the preview period, the longest in history, the show’s composers, Bono and the Edge of U2, who had never before written a musical, were on tour rather than locked in the theater working on revisions. The results? Once envisioned as a $25 million musical, “Spider-Man” is now the most expensive ever. Four cast members have been injured, one seriously. Three lead actors left. Flying scenes have regularly malfunctioned. Money nearly ran out at one point. Reviews have been terrible, and some actors are trying to get out of their contracts early. None of this has diminished ticket sales, which, at more than $1 million a week, remain higher than most on Broadway. But “Spider-Man” must do superboffo business to have any shot of recouping its costs. So last week the producers replaced their marquee director, Ms. Taymor; hired a new creative team; and said major changes were coming to the book and score. “People are still coming to work and doing their job,” said Michael Mulheren, the actor who plays the editor and publisher of The Daily Bugle. “But we want this process to end.” In Spider-Man lore, mixing Peter Parker’s human DNA with that of a radioactive spider yielded a superhero, but no one knows what the blend of Ms. Taymor’s vision and that of the director hired to replace her, Philip William McKinley, will look like. Suddenly the efforts to keep “Spider-Man” from becoming the biggest flop in theater history are starting to look like business as usual on Broadway. A more commercial director, Mr. McKinley is known for his work on the Hugh Jackman musical “The Boy From Oz” in 2003 as well as Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circuses. Mr. Cohl described the changes to come as part of a quest for excellence, not a rescue. “On a scale of 1 to 10,” he said, “we have a show that’s a 10 now, and it needs to be a 12, that’s all.”

Ominous Beginning On Oct. 20, 2005, a small group gathered in the Edge’s TriBeCa apartment to sign the partnership agreement to create a musical version of “Spider-Man.” The driving force behind the show for the past four years had been Tony Adams, who had produced “Victor/Victoria” on Broadway and who had sold the “Spider-Man” idea to the U2 partners. But as the Edge went to get a pen, Mr. Adams suffered a stroke. Two days later he was dead. Others might have abandoned the project, but the “Spider-Man” team decided to go on, with Mr. Adams’s partner, David Garfinkle, as lead producer. An able entertainment lawyer, Mr. Garfinkle had little producing experience, and he ceded artistic decisions to Ms. Taymor, a perfectionist whose aesthetic included never repeating herself. Mr. Garfinkle did not take the tack that Disney had while working with Ms. Taymor on their hit musical, “The Lion King”: her genius flourishes best under supervision. “Disney knew to stay on top of Julie to ensure they were all working toward the same goals,” said Jeffrey Seller, a veteran Broadway producer who has not worked with her directly. “It paid off royally.” Soon, however, Mr. Garfinkle was gone. Late in 2009, when it became clear he couldn’t raise the money needed to capitalize the show, he was replaced by Mr. Cohl, a concert promoter with little Broadway background, and Jeremiah J. Harris, whose company had manufactured the sets. “Michael and I took over a show that was dead, was sinking,” Mr. Harris said in an interview. “We got pumps running in the first couple of days. We raised $30 million for the show. Now is this a $30 million show, or is it a $65 million one that the schmuck — you can quote me on this — that the schmuck running things before us screwed up?” Mr. Garfinkle said the economic downturn hurt his efforts. “I’m very happy these guys came in to help the show,” he said. “I don’t have an ego. I just care about the show.” Mr. Cohl was a skilled fund-raiser with a showman’s touch. But his background was in spectacle, not storytelling, and he said last year his job was not to override his team’s artistic instincts. He had signed on as producer, he said, “because of Julie, Bono, Edge — period.” Left largely to her own devices Ms. Taymor hired top-dollar stars to design the sets and costumes and to choreograph the show. The costume team alone had 23 people — 4 designers, 4 shoppers and 15 dressers. At one rehearsal in November at least a dozen designers and crew members struggled to fasten a spider costume onto the actress Natalie Mendoza. Not enough, it seemed. “Can we get the puppet department up there?” Ms. Taymor said into a microphone. With that, 20 more people took the stage to help Ms. Mendoza. A video crew documented the creative energy. “If the show works, all the money will be a moot point,” Ms. Taymor said later. “If it doesn’t, it will be a tragedy.”

Soaring Ambitions As the book writer, Ms. Taymor pushed the musical toward Greek myth, creating a spider villainess named Arachne while largely discarding emotional touchstones like Peter’s Uncle Ben. “Tying this story back to mythology,” Ms. Taymor said several weeks ago, “was the main thing the movies haven’t done, which is something I really wanted to do. It’s something you can do in the theater — go into this absolutely dreamlike mythic place, out of time, between reality and dream world. That’s where I live. You can see that in everything I’ve done.” More than a few Broadway bloggers compared Ms. Taymor to Arachne and noted that in the Playbill, the character is described as born from hubris — “a special word for the sort of arrogance that makes you forget your own humanity.” Yet as rehearsals began last July it seemed as if the show’s success hinged not on the script but on whether it could safely perfect its 27 flying sequences, the most ambitious and fastest ever on Broadway. In most productions performers fly in parallel planes, like children on adjoining swings. But the aerialists in “Spider-Man” cross lines, they intersect, so they can, for example, battle in the air, one character riding on the back of another like something from a movie or a dream. To pull this off the producers hired 35 stagehands and the man who coordinated the flying for the “Spider-Man” movies. They hired seven stage managers, where an average musical has three or four. The aerialists were sent out West for training. And the back of the theater was packed with enough computers to track travel to the Moon. “There was no model anywhere to show how long and how difficult it would take to create just the big Spidey-Green Goblin flying fight,” said Patrick Page, a Broadway veteran who plays the Green Goblin. “Other shows rehearse; we rehearsed longer. Other shows tech; we teched longer.” Despite the attention to the flying, Ms. Taymor and Bono said they understood that if, as Bono put it, the “wows” came only from such effects, and not “from the soul or the heart, we will all think that we’ve failed.” With loads of money going out and none coming in, Mr. Cohl insisted preview performances begin in November. Composers usually attend most previews shows, but Bono and the Edge were scheduled to be on tour with U2 in Australia for the first few weeks. They missed the initial flying breakdowns and the 30-foot fall from an onstage platform by an actor, Christopher Tierney, who suffered broken ribs and other injuries. Bono didn’t see a performance until Jan. 4 — five weeks into previews — and immediately noticed the sludgy quality of sound in the theater. The next day the music producer Steve Lillywhite was called in to remake the sound system. It improved, but within weeks Bono and the Edge were on tour again. The producers say the composers were in constant touch as they toured, and would have been at the first previews if the show had not been delayed by work on the flying. The flying did ultimately come together, though not everyone was impressed. One television commentator called it “the J.V. version of Cirque du Soleil.” But when the critics showed up in February, on what was to have been the fourth scheduled opening night, it was Ms. Taymor’s book — the story she wrote with the playwright Glen Berger — that was deemed a failure. “For a story that has also inspired hit action movies, it is remarkably static in this telling,” Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times. His review said “Spider-Man” may “rank among the worst” Broadway musicals ever.

Narrative Challenges Ms. Taymor is known for an energetic devotion to her own ideas, which tend to be visually arresting, not necessarily narratively coherent. In a review in The Times of her latest film, “The Tempest,” the critic A. O. Scott said her directorial ideas “slosh around.” One of her inventions for “Spider-Man” was a Geek Chorus, four comic-book buffs who create the musical’s narrative on the spot. Critics trashed the device, one calling it “utterly superfluous.” The Geeks distract the audience while sets are being changed, but their hold on Ms. Taymor was more personal. She said the foursome stood for Bono, the Edge, Mr. Berger and herself. She, for example, is the smart, tomboyish character named Miss Arrow, who knows a lot about myth; Bono is the overenthusiastic Jimmy-6. “We would be at Bono’s house in France or another one of our places,” she said this winter, “the four of us all tossing out ideas and setting up tape recorders to make sure our thoughts were captured. We were like our own geek band. And we loved having that spirit in the show.” Another target of critical scorn was “Deeply Furious,” a second-act song in which Arachne dispatches the Furies, her posse of spider women, from their “astral plane” home to rob shoe stores in Manhattan. The robberies serve to put the spider-women into high heels for a frenzied bit of choreography. But Ms. Taymor acknowledged in January that the scene lacked clarity, and Arachne was given a new line to provide a rationale for the thefts. “I descended from the astral plane with the help of human shoes!” an earth-bound Arachne announced, though that didn’t seem to help audiences much. Nevertheless the producers in February called the song “a fun number” and “in the great Broadway vamp tradition.” But the cumulative effect of negative reviews was taking its toll. “While we don’t agree with everything the critics said,” Mr. Harris offered in February, “we’re not stupid.” On Thursday, after pushing Ms. Taymor aside, the producers were no longer promising that the shoe number would survive.

Spidey Against the World As the number of previews neared 100, midday rehearsals were still routinely followed by three-hour performances. With so many moving pieces, even the smallest adjustments were difficult. “It can take one day, six hours, to change 45 seconds,” said Mr. Mulheren, the actor. The cast would rehearse a number one way in the afternoon, then switch back to the old version that night. Mr. Page tried to buck up morale by buying everyone red-and-blue wristbands that said, “Rise Above,” the title of one of the musical’s songs. Some of the changes had an effect. Mike Klein and Jeff Kyler, two Broadway fans from Baltimore, said a February performance they saw, with a new ending that had Spider-Man fly around the theater, was much better than the show they had watched in December. “If they make as much improvement as they did since the last time we saw it,” Mr. Kyler said, “I can’t even imagine how good it could be.” And no investor complained publicly. “Look, we all know ‘Spider-Man’ has problems,” said Norton Herrick, a multimillionaire real estate mogul who wrote one of the last big checks — about $5 million — to capitalize the musical last year. “We also know that it’s 100 percent better than when it started in November. Critics might not get it at first, but none of us would go broke over a flop.” In the end, though, the relationship among Ms. Taymor, Bono and the Edge could not rise above the tide of bad news. After Ms. Taymor was forced out on Wednesday her supporters said the two composers were too often absent and too unwilling to give her the time and latitude to address their concerns. The U2 camp said their other commitments had been well known, and that Ms. Taymor resisted efforts to bring in outside help to clarify the plot and streamline the storytelling. They worried that a second round of negative reviews could be fatal. Both sides spoke anonymously to reveal confidential viewpoints amid legal wrangling over Ms. Taymor’s contractual rights. By March 4 it was clear something was wrong. Ms. Taymor attended a meeting that day with the producers to hash out the issues. Afterward she never showed up for an afternoon rehearsal. With only a third of Broadway shows ever turning a profit, the producers realized they needed to take one last shot at remaking the show so it could live on in productions around the world, where the real money could be made. No plans have been set, but the producers have talked of creating permanent productions in Las Vegas and London as early as 2013 or scaled-down versions with simplified flying that could fit into various arenas. But the plans depend on the fate of “Spider-Man” on Broadway. “We still believe in it,” Mr. Page, the actor, said. “And I believe in Julie. Without question everything that’s fabulous about ‘Spider-Man’ is the vision of Julie Taymor. Now she’s gone, and we have to go back to basics of Broadway: pull together, work hard, make improvements, focus on the art.” The struggles were evident again, though, on Wednesday night just after the cast members were told that Ms. Taymor was gone. Out they went to perform their 101st preview. But there was a problem at the close of Act I, when Mr. Page’s character, the Green Goblin, is involved in the show’s most spectacular flying sequence. That night, as on others, the flying had to be scratched because of technical difficulties. One Show Spins Its Last, As Another Takes Shape

By PATRICK HEALY April 15, 2011

History is being made on Broadway this weekend: The $70 million museum piece that is Julie Taymor’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the most expensive musical of all time, is on display in its final performances through Sunday afternoon, then disassembled out of existence. Gone, when the show resumes performances on May 12 after a three-week overhaul, will be the Geek Chorus of narrators who were stand-ins for the show’s creators: Bono and the Edge of U2, the playwright Glen Berger and Ms. Taymor, whom the producers ousted as director last month over creative conflicts. Gone will be Ms. Taymor’s vision of the spider villainess Arachne, now a central role inspired by Greek mythology. The part will be reduced to a guardian angel character during the hiatus, according to members of the cast and the production. Gone, too, will be some of Ms. Taymor’s head-spinning numbers, like “Deeply Furious,” in which Arachne and her spider ladies-in-waiting become all-powerful by slipping shoes onto their many legs. Gone will be the Act I death of another villain, the Green Goblin, who will become an even bigger character when performances resume, reflecting the wishes of focus groups that “Spider-Man” producers convened this winter. And gone will be the Act II climax, a confrontation between Arachne and Peter Parker. For some members of the “Spider-Man” cast and crew, the weeks since Ms. Taymor’s firing on March 9 have been a painful limbo: eight performances a week of a show marked for extinction. Once again, “Spider-Man” is without historical precedent: no other Broadway show has run for months without opening and then shut down temporarily to excise much of the original director’s concept. “I’m greatly saddened that the world won’t get to see Julie’s vision after the end of this week,” said Gideon Glick, who played one of the geeks, Jimmy-6 (with qualities inspired by Bono), who will leave the production after Sunday. “She aspired to show the world that comic books were part of a larger mythos that’s been around since even before the Greeks. She elevated the story of ‘Spider-Man’ to a cosmic level.” In a statement, Ms. Taymor’s spokesman said: “Julie feels that the early reviews that published before the show was ready to open sadly do not reflect the show that is closing this weekend. Most critics, in fact, will have never seen this latest version before they see one that greatly changes major threads of the story, choreography and songs.” As some actors have prepared to depart, others have been rehearsing the new script written by Mr. Berger and his new collaborator, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a playwright and comic-book author. But even some of those who are staying said they were still struggling over the loss of Ms. Taymor. T. V. Carpio, who will remain in the cast as Arachne, described Ms. Taymor in a statement as “at the heart of this project.” “Julie takes risks and that is what makes her amazing,” Ms. Carpio wrote. Regarding Ms. Taymor’s ideas for “Spider-Man,” she added, “I’m sure you can always find flaws in things, but the fact is she took that risk and she should be commended for it.” The reconfigured creative team — the theater and circus director Philip William McKinley (Broadway’s “Boy From Oz”), Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa and Mr. Berger — also declined to be interviewed through a spokesman for the production. More than 245,000 people have seen “Spider-Man” since Nov. 28, when the first of about 140 previews so far took place — the most ever for a Broadway show. Its lead producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, kept delaying opening night in hopes that Ms. Taymor (and now her successors) could make improvements. Theater critics roundly thrashed the show in reviews in early February; the producers have said they hope the overhaul will yield a better production that will win praise from critics who come to review it just before June 14, the latest opening-night date. Through the months “Spider-Man” has remained one of the top-grossing shows on Broadway, earning more than $25 million so far, persisting as an object of fascination for fans of Spider-Man, U2, Ms. Taymor and problem-plagued entertainment. Yet the musical’s typical weekly gross of $1.3 million is barely enough to cover the unusually high running costs of this technically ambitious show. Positive reviews from critics and improved word of mouth among theatergoers will be essential to increasing grosses by a few hundred thousand dollars a week, which will give the show a better chance of someday paying back its investors. Members of the current production, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements at the producers’ request, said that the goal of the new creative team was to strip away some of the musical’s darker elements to make it more family-friendly. While audiences now regularly include children accompanied by grown-ups, the new team wants parents to know that the show will be a pleasurable, thrilling experience for young audiences, rather than the more serious, adult- minded fare that Ms. Taymor had in mind. The producers also reportedly believe that a successful Broadway reception for “Spider-Man” is critical to mounting future, profitable versions of the show in cities like Las Vegas and London. Still, the musical’s weekly grosses indicate that there has been an audience for Ms. Taymor’s original vision, said Daniel Ezralow, the “Spider-Man” dance and aerial choreographer and a longtime Taymor collaborator who was replaced after she was. He said in an interview that he was still rooting for the show, and noted — with a touch of bewilderment — that the producers told him they were pleased with his contributions even as they chose a new choreographer, Chase Brock. “The musical is doing great, and I hope that it does much better — I really wish the best for the show,” Mr. Ezralow said. “I did hear from everybody that they loved my work, the producers included. But typically with a changeover of government, you also get a new secretary of state,” he said, referring to the addition of Mr. Brock after Mr. McKinley was hired to direct. In recent weeks actors and producers who have worked with Ms. Taymor on other projects have begun mounting a defense of her work on “Spider-Man.” Mr. Glick echoed them in an interview, recalling that he initially scoffed when his mother alerted him to auditions for “Spider-Man.” But when he heard that the director would be Ms. Taymor, whose film work (“Across the Universe,” “Frida”) he admired, Mr. Glick said he decided to try out for the musical. “I have always been excited by Julie’s visceral style,” said Mr. Glick, who appeared on Broadway in the original cast of the Tony Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening” and Off Broadway in the critically praised play “Speech & Debate.” “Sometimes style can alienate audiences from the material. But Julie is a rare artist whose distinct images are imbued with emotion, evoking awe and tears.” While seats at the final performances through Sunday had been selling briskly, it was unclear if Ms. Taymor would be sitting in one, friends of hers said this week. She, Mr. Cohl and Mr. Harris still have not signed a final agreement spelling out her creative rights over the show going forward, despite weeks of negotiations. Bad blood remains between Ms. Taymor, as the former director, and the producers and Bono and the Edge, who helped push her out after nine years of working together. Ms. Taymor has taken the view that this “Spider-Man” is not what some are calling “the director’s cut”: she was not, after all, given the chance to make all the improvements to the show she wanted, her friends say. Theater Review: 1 Radioactive Bite, 8 Legs And 183 Previews

“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”: Reeve Carney in the title role and Patrick Page as the Green Goblin in this reworking, which finally opened Tuesday at the Foxwoods Theater. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

By BEN BRANTLEY June 14, 2011 There is something to be said for those dangerous flying objects — excuse me, I mean actors — that keep whizzing around the Foxwoods Theater, where the mega-expensive musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has entered the latest chapter of its fraught and anxious existence. After all, if you’re worried that somebody might fall on top of you from a great height, the odds are that you won’t nod off. Those adrenaline-raising acrobatics are a necessary part of the lumpy package that is “Spider-Man,” which had its long-delayed official opening on Tuesday night, after 180- some preview performances. First seen and deplored by critics several months ago — when impatient journalists (including me) broke the media embargo for reviews as the show’s opening date kept sliding into a misty future — this singing comic book is no longer the ungodly, indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore. So is this ascent from jaw-dropping badness to mere mediocrity a step upward? Well, until last weekend, when I caught a performance of this show’s latest incarnation, I would have recommended “Spider-Man” only to carrion-feasting theater vultures. Now, if I knew a less-than-precocious child of 10 or so, and had several hundred dollars to throw away, I would consider taking him or her to the new and improved “Spider-Man.” The first time I saw the show, it was like watching the Hindenburg burn and crash. This time “Spider-Man” — which was originally conceived by the (since departed) visionary director Julie Taymor with the rock musicians Bono and the Edge (of U2) — stirred foggy, not unpleasant childhood memories of second-tier sci-fi TV in the 1960s, with blatantly artificial sets and actors in unconvincing alien masks. “Spider-Man” may be the only Broadway show of the past half-century to make international headlines regularly, often with the adjective “troubled” attached to its title. So I’m assuming you already know at least a bit of its long and tortuous history of revision, cancellation, indecision and injury (from production-related accidents), and of its true star. That would be Ms. Taymor (who retains an “original direction by” credit), who in the 1990s was hailed as the new Ziegfeld after reinventing a Disney animated film, “The Lion King,” as a classy, mass-appeal Broadway blockbuster. The prospect of her hooking up with Spidey, the nerdy-cool Marvel Comics crime fighter, seemed like a swell opportunity for another lucrative melding of pageantry, puppetry and culture high and low. Those elements were certainly in abundance in the “Spider-Man” I saw several months ago. That production, which featured a script by Ms. Taymor and Glen Berger, placed its young superhero in a broader meta-context of Greek mythology and American Pop art, with a “geek chorus” of commentators and a classical goddess named Arachne as the morally ambiguous mentor of Spidey and his awkward alter ego, Peter Parker. Unfortunately, traditional niceties like a comprehensible plot and characters got lost in the stew. After critics let loose with howls of derision, “Spider-Man” took a three-week performance hiatus to reassemble itself, with tools that included audience focus groups. Exit Ms. Taymor. (Bono, the Edge and Mr. Berger stayed put.) Enter Philip William McKinley — a director whose credits include several versions of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s “Greatest Show on Earth” — and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a writer of both plays and comic books. Now if you check out the directory of paid theater listings in The New York Times, you’ll see that the title “Spider- Man” is prefaced by the promising (if slightly desperate-sounding) words: “REIMAGINED! New Story! New Music!” This is not false advertising. “Spider-Man” now bears only a scant resemblance to the muddled fever dream that was. It is instead not unlike one of those perky, tongue-in- cheek genre-spoof musicals (“Dames at Sea,” “Little Shop of Horrors”) that used to sprout like mushrooms in Greenwich Village, with witty cutout scenery and dialogue bristling with arch quotation marks. Well, that is, if you could imagine such a show being stripped of its irony and supersized by a diabolical mad scientist with an enlarging ray. Though “Spider-Man” has shed its geek chorus and scaled down the role of Arachne (T. V. Carpio), it retains the most spectacular-looking centerpieces from the Taymor version. (George Tsypin is the set designer.) They include a vertiginous vision of Manhattan as seen from the top of the Chrysler Building, judiciously repositioned for plot purposes. But they do seem out of proportion to what has become a straightforward children’s entertainment with a mildly suspenseful story, two-dimensional characters, unapologetically bad jokes and the kind of melodious rock tunes that those under 12 might be familiar with from listening to their parents’ salad-day favorites of the 1980s and ’90s. The puppet figures and mask-dominated costumes worn by the supporting villains still seem to have wandered in from a theme park. The projection designs by Kyle Cooper continue to suggest vintage MTV videos, as does the unimaginative choreography by Daniel Ezralow and Chase Brock. The bonus is that anyone can follow the story now. (Boy is bitten by radioactive spider, boy acquires amazing powers, boy fights crime, boy has doubts, boy triumphs.) And the performers no longer seem overwhelmed by what surrounds them. Their characters now register as distinct if one-note personalities. In the title role Reeve Carney is an appropriately nonthreatening crush object for tweens, an appealingly agitated Everydweeb with great cheekbones and a sanitized, lite version of a concert rocker’s voice. He is well paired with the wryly sincere Jennifer Damiano (“Next to Normal”) as Mary Jane Watson, Peter’s girlfriend. Ms. Carpio’s Arachne (now a beneficent fairy godmother rather than an erotically troubling dream spider) provides the most arresting vocal moments with her ululating nasality. Michael Mulheren is suitably blustery and fatuous as the pandering newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson. And Patrick Page, as the megalomaniacal scientist who becomes the evil mutant called the Green Goblin, provides the one reason for adults unaccompanied by minors to see the show. His role has been expanded, and Mr. Page uses the extra time not just to terrorize the audience amiably, as you expect mean green scene stealers to do. (He has charmingly reinvented that staple of melodramatic villains, the sustained insane cackle.) He also has become the show’s entertaining id, channeling and deflecting our own dark thoughts about this lopsided spectacle. “I’m a $65 million circus tragedy,” he crows at one point. “Well, more like 75 million.” But even Mr. Page is only a sideshow (not to switch metaphors) to the main event. And that’s the sight of real people — mostly stuntmen — flying over the audience, and the implicit danger therein. (An amplified voice warns the audience not only to turn off their cellphones but also to avoid trying to catch a ride with the professional fliers.) Unlike the first time I saw “Spider-Man,” the flying (the first instance of which occurs about 45 minutes into the show) went off without a hitch on this occasion. The potential magic is undercut, though, by the very visible wires and harnesses that facilitate these aerodynamics. Partly because the performers are masked, you experience little of the vicarious wonder and exhilaration that comes from watching Peter Pan or even Mary Poppins ride the air in other musicals. The effect is rather like looking at anonymous daredevils who have been strapped into a breakneck ride at an amusement park. Come to think of it, Coney Island might be a more satisfying choice. As ‘Spider-Man’ Opens, Its Former Director Shows Up. And A Former President

By PATRICK HEALY June 15, 2011

A night on Broadway that was elusive for so long — the opening of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” — came at last on Tuesday and included a reunion that once seemed truly improbable: Julie Taymor, the musical’s director of record, on stage for the curtain call hugging onetime collaborator Bono and the producers who ousted her. After months of setting theater records, like a $70 million budget and 183 preview performances (compared with the usual 30), “Spider-Man” unfolded flawlessly before a buoyant celebrity audience that included former President Bill Clinton sitting in Row N beside his old friend Bono, of U2, the show’s composer with his band mate the Edge. Ms. Taymor looked tan and hale and smiled broadly as she returned to the Foxwoods Theater three months after the producers and Bono and Edge — her fellow creators for nine years — removed her as part of a creative overhaul of the show. Before the performance, Ms. Taymor walked the red carpet outside the theater and was deluged by photographers, cameramen and reporters asking variations of the same question: How do you feel? Perhaps her most memorable response was to one television reporter who asked, referring to the musical, “Do you miss being a part of this?” “I am part of this,” Ms. Taymor replied, strongly emphasizing the verb. Tuesday’s performance began 50 minutes late because of the crush of celebrities arriving, including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Spike Lee, Steve Martin, Liam Neeson and Gina Gershon. Moments before the curtain rose, Mr. Clinton entered the floor of the theater with his daughter, Chelsea, and a small entourage. He took Seat 103, to the left of Bono. Behind them sat Mr. Lloyd Webber on the aisle, next to the Edge. Mr. Clinton applauded after every song and laughed heartily during a scene in which the villain Green Goblin becomes irked by an elaborate voice mail system. The former president and most everyone else leapt to their feet for the curtain call, first to applaud the cast and then many of the show’s designers, musicians and crew members who took the stage. The producers Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris also came out to applause, followed by Bono and Edge and then Philip William McKinley, who took over direction in March. Mr. McKinley, who hugged and kissed Ms. Taymor and whispered at length to her earlier on the red carpet, then introduced her, to wild applause from the audience and stage. She strode out and embraced Bono and the Edge and others, even giving a kiss to Mr. Cohl. The stage directors’ union is now fighting him and other producers in an arbitration proceeding over payments it says are due to Ms. Taymor. Bono, taking a microphone at the curtain call, paid tribute to her creativity, though he drew the loudest cries of approval when he said, “By the way, you’re looking hot, Julie.” Ms. Taymor then briefly expressed her gratitude to “this cast, this crew, these musicians, and this incredible creative team that I worked with for a long time.” Her appearance came after some cast members and others recently encouraged her to attend. Bono called her on Thursday; it was the first time they had spoken since her departure in March. ‘Spider-Man’ Legal Fight Ends In ‘Artistic Divorce’

From left, the Edge, Bono, Philip William McKinley and Julie Taymor at the opening night of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” (Marcus Yam for The New York Times)

By PATRICK HEALY April 10, 2013 After more than a year of brinkmanship at the negotiating table the producers of the musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and their former director, Julie Taymor, announced on Wednesday that they had settled their acrimonious legal battle over profits, copyright claims and artistic credit for the $75 million show, the most expensive in Broadway history. Terms of the settlement were not released, but according to three people familiar with the details both sides came away winners. Ms. Taymor, who filed the lawsuit in 2011 after being fired by the producers, will receive a “significant” monetary settlement that could amount to millions of dollars if “Spider-Man” goes on to wide popularity, according to one person close to her. The producers, meanwhile, no longer need Ms. Taymor’s approval of future tours and versions of “Spider-Man” — especially any that involve altering the show’s script, which she helped write, or her staging. (The show’s music is by Bono and the Edge of U2.) Such an “artistic divorce” from Ms. Taymor, in the words of another person familiar with the settlement, is critical for the producers to have a free hand to transform “Spider- Man” from its current form — a traditionally structured Broadway musical — into an arena-style special-effects extravaganza that might fit well in Las Vegas, one of the places that the producers are considering for a future “Spider-Man” run. The three people familiar with the settlement spoke on condition of anonymity because the terms were confidential. Another significant part of the settlement involves the unusually high weekly operating expenses of the current New York production, running at the Foxwoods Theater. The show costs between $1.1 million and $1.2 million a week to run, the highest expenses on Broadway, because of its aerial stunts and technical complexity, and a problematic amount now that ticket sales are fluctuating between $1 million and $1.5 million during most weeks. With those expenses and box-office grosses, the musical is only inching toward recouping its $75 million capitalization. According to the three people with knowledge of the settlement the terms included some reductions and adjustments in royalties and payments that are factored into the weekly expenses. The sources said they were not sure if the reductions hit everyone — including Bono, the Edge, Ms. Taymor, other members of the creative team, investors in the show, the theater landlord — but they believed most of those involved were affected. With these financial concessions the lead producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, are hopeful that the weekly operating expenses can be reduced — improving the show’s prospects for continuing to run on Broadway for some time to come, the three people said. “As a result of the settlement the Broadway production has been re-engineered financially so it’ll be easier for ‘Spider-Man’ to eventually make a profit,” said one of the people familiar with the agreement. “The settlement basically removes a number of impediments toward having a long and commercially healthy run on Broadway and having future productions of the show around the world that will benefit everyone involved,” this person said. A spokesman for Mr. Cohl and Mr. Harris declined to comment on the impact of the concessions on the show’s weekly operating expenses. Now in its third year of performances, “Spider-Man” has become one of the top- grossing shows on Broadway as well as a fan favorite, despite negative reviews from critics. Its ticket sales have softened in recent months however. The settlement, which avoids a high-profile trial that was set to start on May 28 in a Manhattan federal courtroom, was announced in a joint statement from the producers, Ms. Taymor and Glen Berger, who wrote the script with her before allying himself with the producers, Bono and the Edge. The announcement was a rare moment of accord in relationships, once close, that ruptured in March 2011, when the producers fired Ms. Taymor because of disagreements over making major changes to “Spider-Man,” then generating negative buzz during a problem-plagued preview period. A highly publicized trial would serve no one’s interests, according to several associates of Ms. Taymor and the producers. Ms. Taymor is eager to move on from “Spider-Man,” as she develops movie projects and a coming Off Broadway production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” while Bono and the Edge faced potentially embarrassing tabloid headlines from likely courtroom testimony about their machinations to fire their onetime friend and director. The producers, meanwhile, are eager to plan tours and new productions of “Spider- Man,” and a trial — and any outcome that would have favored Ms. Taymor — only threatened to complicate those efforts. The producers are considering bringing “Spider- Man” to cities and countries where labor and production costs are significantly lower than they are in New York. Possible locations besides Las Vegas are London; Hamburg, Germany; and parts of Asia. Mr. Cohl and Mr. Harris said in a statement: “We’re happy to put all this behind us. We are now looking forward to spreading ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’ in new and exciting ways around the world.” Ms. Taymor, in a statement also released by the musical’s press agent, said, “I’m pleased to have reached an agreement and hope for the continued success of ‘Spider- Man,’ both on Broadway and beyond.” Ms. Taymor initially sued the producers in November 2011 on copyright grounds, saying they were making money from her ideas and script and owed her more than $1 million. The producers then filed their own suit, saying that they had fired Ms. Taymor for breach of contract, and that her claims were baseless. The legal wrangling also ensnared Bono, the Edge, Mr. Berger and Marvel Entertainment, which holds the license for the Spider-Man brand. In August a settlement was reached in principle, but that proved easier said than done, as the parties continued to haggle. Still unknown is the fate of a documentary about the creation of the “Spider-Man” musical, by Jacob Cohl, whose father is the producer Michael Cohl. The filmmaker has completed a cut of the movie; it is unclear how Ms. Taymor is presented in the work, or if she would have any say over her image if the picture is screened at film festivals or in commercial release. ‘Spider-Man’ Resumes Shows After Injury

By ALLAN KOZINN August 16, 2013

“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” is once again facing questions about safety. On Thursday evening, Daniel Curry, an ensemble dancer and understudy, was seriously injured after his leg became pinned in a trap door that appeared to have closed. Mr. Curry, 23, was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center after workmen freed him by sawing through the scenery that had trapped him. The rest of the Thursday evening performance was canceled. Rick Miramontez, a spokesman for the show, acknowledged that Mr. Curry’s right foot had been injured and said on Friday that the actor was in stable condition. He said he did not know how long Mr. Curry would be hospitalized. By Friday afternoon, the show’s technical team had determined that the computer- controlled scenery had not been the cause of the accident, Mr. Miramontez said, adding that the Friday evening show would be performed as scheduled. Mr. Curry had been substituting for Adam Roberts on Thursday. Mr. Miramontez said that Mr. Roberts would resume the role on Friday. “It was definitely not a computer malfunction,” Mr. Miramontez said. “There are numerous safety protocols that are in place at every performance. In the case of last night, the situation in question occurred due to human error.” The hydraulic equipment that controlled the trap door was stopped manually when the accident occurred, he said, consistent with the show’s safety protocols. Asked if the company was suggesting that the error was Mr. Curry’s, Mr. Miramontez said: “Not at all. There are other humans involved, and we are certainly not pointing a finger at Daniel. We are pointing out that the equipment is working properly only because it applies to tonight’s performance.” During its long development, “Spider-Man” was plagued by injuries. Natalie Mendoza, the original Arachne, left the show after she sustained a concussion when she was hit in the head by a rope during the first preview performance. Her successor, T. V. Carpio, was injured on the set as well. Christopher Tierney, an ensemble actor who performed stunts dressed as the title character, sustained broken ribs and other internal injuries when he fell 20 feet from a stage platform. (Mr. Tierney eventually rejoined the show.) In February, Joshua Kobak, who replaced Mr. Tierney, sued the production for $6 million for injuries he suffered. But since the show opened in June 2011, performers have had only the usual share of minor injuries typical for Broadway musicals. Actors’ Equity, the union that represents actors and dancers, has begun an investigation into the accident, Maria Somma, the spokeswoman for the union, said in a statement. “Acknowledging that theater can be an inherently dangerous profession as technology continues to challenge the boundaries of creativity, and because of the technical difficulties and challenges in ‘Spider-Man,’ the show has worked hard to have safety protocols in place,” the union’s statement said. Melissa Kessler of Plainview, N.Y., saw the show on Thursday night. She said that after Mr. Curry’s leg became pinned in the trap door, he began screaming. “The floor looked completely closed on his leg,” she said. Yarden Ronen, the director of development at the Peridance Capezio Center, where Mr. Curry is a teacher at the international dance school, said, “I know that his injury is pretty severe,” but did not have other details. Mr. Curry was to have taught a class there on Friday afternoon. “He has been teaching here for about a year,” Mr. Ronen said. “We are hoping for his return soon.” Mr. Curry, who was born in Duluth, Minn., studied dance in Minneapolis and in New York at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts and at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Before joining “Spider-Man” in November 2010, he was a dancer in a Michael Jackson tribute show. “I have not been injured, knock wood,” he told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in July 2011. “Safety is paramount for the show. There’s an A plan, a B backup, all the way to H.”

Patrick Healy contributed reporting. Weekly Ticket Sales Drop Under $1 Million For Broadway’s ‘Spider-Man’

By PATRICK HEALY August 26, 2013

For the first time since performances began in November 2010, the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” took in less than $1 million for a standard eight- performance playing week, with last week’s gross totaling $966,952. While ticket sales have been softening since last fall for the $75 million musical, the most expensive in Broadway history, a spokesman on Monday linked last week’s total to “fallout” from a well-publicized foot injury suffered by the cast member Daniel Curry during the Aug. 15 performance. The record-low $966,952 gross is notable because, over the last two years, the “Spider-Man” producers have explicitly pointed to their seven-figure grosses as a sign of audience validation for a musical that critics widely panned. The producers have also been optimistic about earning back the show’s $75 million capitalization, but that feat would require weekly box office grosses in the $1.5 million range for several years. Last week’s gross was below the show’s weekly running costs, which are in the low seven figures, and far below the $2.94 million that the show grossed for nine performances during the New Year’s holiday week in the 2011-12 season. That week set a record for the highest gross ever on Broadway. Asked about ticket sales, the production’s spokesman, Rick Miramontez, said in a statement: “When a show like ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’ suffers a very public trauma, as it did the previous week, we expect there to be some fallout at the box office. To be honest, we are less concerned with ticket sales at the moment and more concerned with the recovery of Daniel Curry, but ‘Spider-Man’ remains one of the highest grossing shows on Broadway, and we expect this dip to be little more than a temporary reaction to the media coverage.” Mr. Miramontez declined to discuss Mr. Curry’s recovery, citing the actor’s privacy. But another executive on the production team said that Mr. Curry was still at Bellevue Hospital, where he was taken the night of the accident, and had recently had a third foot surgery. “The mobility of the foot is still in question,” said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the show’s producers had not authorized release of Mr. Curry’s health information. “Spider-Man” remains a fan favorite. No Broadway musical has endured so many bad reviews and so much negative publicity — over the firing of its original director, Julie Taymor, and over cast injuries in its early months — yet continued to run for nearly three years with mostly million-dollar weeks. Broadway musicals and plays had modest ticket sales over all last week, with a total gross of $20.6 million compared with $21.8 million during the previous week and $19.3 million for the comparable week in 2012. Attendance was down slightly compared to the previous week, but it was a bit better than the comparable week last year. ‘Spider-Man’ To Close On Broadway

By PATRICK HEALY November 18, 2013

The $75 million Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the most expensive theatrical production in history, will close in early January after months of declining ticket sales, one of the lead producers said on Monday night. A somewhat revamped version of the show is being planned for Las Vegas in 2015, according to the producer, Jeremiah J. Harris. The decision to close “Spider-Man,” which gained worldwide publicity and notoriety because of cast injuries and backstage conflicts, as well as its enormous budget, came down to a hard financial reality after three years of performances, Mr. Harris said. While the musical emerged to become an audience favorite, grossing roughly $1.5 million a week in ticket sales for a time, “Spider-Man” eventually lost popularity. It grossed only $742,595 last week, or 48 percent of the maximum possible amount, with about three-quarters of its seats filled at the Foxwoods Theater. “The show is, I would say, middling,” Mr. Harris said of box office sales. “We could run for probably another three to five years being stuck in the middle. We think it will play Las Vegas with a greater bang than it did in New York.” The producers are now in final negotiations for a space in Las Vegas, which Mr. Harris declined to identify. Mr. Harris said the owners of the Foxwoods Theater did not invoke their stop clause, with which theater owners can force a show to close when its weekly grosses fall below a certain amount. “The decision to close was all ours,” he said. The owners of the Foxwoods, who are based in London, could not be immediately reached for comment. The decision to close the show was reported Monday night by The Wall Street Journal. The new Australian musical “King Kong” has been considering a move to the Foxwoods after “Spider-Man” closes, but no official plans are in place. The Foxwoods is expected to undergo some renovations before its next tenant moves in. While “Spider-Man” has grossed $203 million since performances began in November 2010, the musical is still a long way from paying back investors who contributed to the $75 million capitalization. Mr. Harris said he did not know how close “Spider-Man” was to recouping the money. But ticket sales sometimes barely covered the show’s weekly running costs, which exceeded $1 million, so there was relatively little profit to share with investors. Some loans also had to be paid back first. As for Las Vegas, Mr. Harris said the creative team would be made up of key players from the Broadway production, including Philip William McKinley, who took over directing duties on the musical after the producers fired its original leader, Julie Taymor. “I think the musical will be very similar to New York, but obviously sculpted for the Las Vegas market,” Mr. Harris said of “Spider-Man,” which is best-known for its aerial effects over the audience and its original score by Bono and the Edge of U2. Mr. Harris said he did not know at this point if the script would change markedly or if Bono and the Edge would write new songs for Las Vegas. Nor did Mr. Harris have a budget estimate for the Las Vegas production, but he said that sets, costumes and special- effects technology from the Broadway “Spider-Man” would be used there. He said he hoped the show would eventually spin off future productions overseas. The firing of Ms. Taymor in March 2011, after artistic clashes with the producers and Bono and the Edge, was one of several highly publicized incidents that seemed to fuel public interest and ticket sales for the show. After officially opening in June 2011 to largely negative reviews from critics, the show settled into a period of strong ticket sales and relative calm inside the Foxwoods — even as Ms. Taymor and the producers sued one another in court, in legal wrangling that was finally settled in April. But “Spider-Man” received more negative publicity in August after a dancer in the show, Daniel Curry, was seriously injured mid-performance; he is now considering legal action as he continues to recover, his lawyers say. ‘Spider-Man’ Investors Shaken By Projected $60 Million Loss

By PATRICK HEALY November 19, 2013

Investors and executives with the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” said on Tuesday that the show will have historic losses of up to $60 million when it closes on Jan. 4. The closing follows a sharp decline in ticket sales because of competition from hotter musicals and a lack of star attractions in the cast. Several investors said they were reeling from the closing announcement, made on Monday night. Three said they have not been paid back anything during the three-year run of “Spider-Man,” which cost twice as much as any other Broadway show, and said they planned to write off their investments. While Broadway flops usually lose $5 million to $15 million, “Spider-Man” will lose far more, given the show’s record-setting $75 million capitalization; the enormous weekly costs of running this special effects-laden production; and its operating losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars a week this fall, as the box office faltered. The investors said they did not blame mismanagement by the lead producers for the show’s demise, but rather complained about its unsustainable budget and the shortcomings in the music, by Bono and the Edge of U2 — a score by famous artists that was supposed to be a selling point with audiences but ended up being dismissed by critics. “We will see nothing back, not a cent,” said Terry Allen Kramer, a veteran Broadway producer who put about $1 million into “Spider-Man.” “A lot of us feel that it’s an extraordinary show with lousy music, but the main problem is that the budget numbers were a disaster — just a disaster.” While “Spider-Man” has grossed a strong $203 million since performances began in November 2010, most of that money has been drained away by two huge expenses. The bigger was the production’s running costs of between $1 million and $1.3 million a week, which sometimes exceeded ticket revenue. And the show was also saddled with payments on multimillion-dollar priority loans from a crucial investor, Norton Herrick, and from the show’s lead producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris. (Priority loans made by lead producers and others, and repayment schedules that favor them over regular investors, are standard on Broadway shows that need quick capital to deal with cost overruns.) Mr. Cohl, in an interview on Tuesday, acknowledged that he and Mr. Harris have been paid back portions of their loans, while many investors will lose all their money unless “Spider-Man” proves profitable in future productions. A sleeker version of the show is being planned for Las Vegas in 2015, and a run in Germany is envisioned at some point. “I think the investors will eventually see something, but look, this is showbiz,” Mr. Cohl said. “I hope the show will be a huge hit in Vegas and Germany and on an arena tour, and then I expect them to see some money back. But it will be a long road and take a long time.” (Mr. Herrick did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.) With its unparalleled flying sequences and midair fight scenes, “Spider-Man” has always depended on being spectacular, but, in the end, its ticket sales were simply “middling,” in the words of Mr. Harris. The show drew 15,000 people a week in its early months of performances, partly because of spectacularly bad publicity over cast injuries and clashes between the producers and their original director, Julie Taymor. (She declined to comment on Tuesday.) If the show’s quality wasn’t generating buzz among theatergoers (the reviews were terrible), its calamities were — and people came. During the week between Christmas 2011 and New Year’s Day, “Spider-Man” set a record of $2.94 million for a weekly gross on Broadway. While ticket sales softened noticeably last year during the usually lucrative Thanksgiving week, down 17 percent from the previous year, Mr. Cohl said it wasn’t until two months ago that he knew in his gut that the Broadway run would end. While audience feedback surveys were largely positive, and the show was still drawing a sizable crowd of about 10,000 people a week, “Spider-Man” fell below $1 million in the weekly grosses in late August and never recovered. By the end of September, the musical was heavily discounting tickets and its weekly gross had fallen to $621,960. Like many producers on struggling shows, Mr. Cohl made attempts through the summer and fall to recruit star names in hopes of reviving ticket sales — in the case of “Spider-Man,” talking to the rock musicians Alice Cooper and Gene Simmons about playing the villainous Green Goblin. “We got fairly far along with Gene, but there just wasn’t time to get him into the show quickly enough to make a difference,” said Mr. Cohl, who knew both musicians from his years as a rock concert promoter. “The reality is that there are some new, really good, fun shows out there now, like ‘Kinky Boots’ and ‘Motown,’ and we settled into what we are,” he said. The show’s investors, as well as other Broadway producers, did not dispute his analysis on Tuesday, though they said that the quality of “Spider-Man” was always a problem in generating word-of-mouth endorsements among theatergoers. While two investors spoke on condition of anonymity because the show’s finances are confidential, Ms. Kramer also echoed them in saying that the scale of the show and its budget made it unsustainable for a long run without blockbuster popularity with audiences. “I don’t know if it will work in Vegas, either, or if I’d want to be a part of it there,” she said. “I don’t want to be stupid again.” Once “Spider-Man” clears out of the Foxwoods Theater, months of renovations are expected before the next tenant can move in. One possible candidate is “King Kong,” a $30 million Australian musical featuring a 20-foot-tall puppet as the title character and a technically ambitious production that requires an enormous theater, like the 1,900-seat Foxwoods. But the producers of “King Kong” are also eyeing the 1,750-seat Broadway Theater, a prime house. Adrian Bryan-Brown, a spokesman for the “King Kong” producers, said on Tuesday that a deal to bring the show to Broadway is expected to be finalized soon but that no timetable has been confirmed. Low On Funds, ‘Spider-Man’ Dims Its Last Lights

By PATRICK HEALY January 5, 2014

It wouldn’t have been a fitting final performance of Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” if something hadn’t gone wrong. The $75 million production of “Spider-Man,” the most expensive musical in history and one of the most troubled, ended a run of three years and two months on Saturday night with a final show that dazzled audience members as the superhero flew over their heads in the most elaborate aerial stunts ever on Broadway. But the special-effects-laden musical, which drew headlines for a string of technical problems and cast injuries, did endure one glitch on Saturday: a door handle failed to close properly on the villainous Green Goblin’s metamorphosis machine, causing a crew member to dash out on stage and snap it into place while a musical number was underway. The 1,900-strong audience roared with approval and applause at the sight of the stagehand, whose quick work helped insure the safety of the actor inside the goblin’s machine. And to be fair, it was the briefest of errors — nothing on par with the five times that “Spider-Man” had to stop entirely during its first preview performance on Nov. 28, 2010, the star-crossed debut of a production whose difficulties turned it into a national punchline and an object of ghoulish fascination. There were no speeches on Saturday night until the curtain call, when the actor Robert Cuccioli, who played the Green Goblin, thanked “the vast array of dedicated and talented people backstage” who had worked on the show. He then asked them to join the cast for a bow, and also called out the musical’s lead producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah Harris, and its current director, Philip William McKinley. As audience members threw red and white roses onto the Foxwoods Theater stage, two of the musical’s former stars, Reeve Carney (who played Peter Parker for two and a half years) and Patrick Page (who won strong reviews as the Green Goblin), also ran onto the stage with bouquets for current cast members. A couple of actors held banners that read, “Always Bet on Red (and Blue)!” and “Vegas, Baby!,” the latter a reference to the producers’ announcement that they intend to open a revamped version of “Spider-Man” in Las Vegas in 2015. No mention was made of the show’s famous composers, Bono and the Edge of U2, nor its original director, Julie Taymor, who was fired during preview performances after clashing with the two musicians and the producers over strategies to improve “Spider- Man.” Bono, the Edge, and Ms. Taymor did not attend Saturday’s performance; only the fourth creator of the show, Glen Berger, who co-wrote the script with Ms. Taymor, was in the audience. (Mr. Berger has been busy lately selling copies of a tell-all memoir about the making of the musical and the ensuing infighting.) The vibe inside the theater was festive, with Mr. Carney, Mr. Page and other audience members going to lengths to loudly applaud the first entrances of several actors. The performance included only one inside joke about the closing of the show: A character reads aloud a newspaper headline, “Super-hero mega-musical defies doubters, runs three years on Broadway.” A cast party was also planned for later that night at John’s Pizzeria in Times Square. “Spider-Man” had 1,248 performances in all, a healthy run by Broadway standards – but not nearly enough to come close to earning back the original $75 million capitalization to create and stage the musical. Most Broadway musicals are capitalized at between $10 million to $15 million; the costs for “Spider-Man” were much higher because of years-long delays in making the show as well as hefty set and costume budgets, salaries for scores of people on the creative team, and a costly retooling of the show during previews, among many other budget items. The producers and investors on “Spider-Man” are expected to lose up to $60 million on the Broadway run, though they could still see some financial return if the show runs in Las Vegas and proves popular. The producers are negotiating with the Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn about putting the musical into one of his properties and adding even more special effects. Final terms have yet to be reached. While the musical grossed more than $210 million over its Broadway run, profits were relatively low because ticket sales were barely enough to cover the show’s record- high running costs, which totaled between $1 million and $1.3 million each week. (The running costs were in addition to the $75 million capitalization.) “Spider-Man” would have had to run for at least seven years on Broadway to recoup the $75 million investment, according to the producers, though other theater executives estimated that it would have taken even longer. The musical benefited early on from unprecedented media coverage of cast injuries, aerial stunt problems and backstage fights (culminating in the ouster of Ms. Taymor), and countless theatergoers no doubt purchased tickets out of curiosity. The producers had hoped that all the attention might draw in audience members who would then tell friends and neighbors that the show itself was actually good, while also counting on the popularity of “Spider-Man” to attract families and tourists. Ticket sales were strong for a year and a half after the media frenzy died down, but they began to decline noticeably by the fall of 2012. Some weeks in 2013 were even worse, as competition increased from new family musicals like “Cinderella” and “Matilda” and spectacle-driven shows like “Pippin.” By August, when the “Spider-Man” grosses fell below $1 million for the first time for an eight-performance week, the question looming over the show was when it would close, not if. But the show’s highs and lows weren’t on the minds of several audience members on Saturday night. They cared only about the highs. “Spider-man’s my favorite super-hero, so I loved it,” said Will Gercich, 12, of Secaucus, N.J., after the performance. “When he started flying around the theater, it just felt so incredible to watch.” “Will really wanted to see the very last performance,” added his mother, Patricia, as they waited at the stage door for cast members to sign autographs. “It was a special occasion,” said Will, who fell in love with the superhero from comic books. “I’ll never forget the show.” Injured Actor Is Suing ‘Spider-Man’ Producers

By PATRICK HEALY January 31, 2014

Daniel Curry, a young actor who was seriously injured in August while performing in the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” filed a lawsuit this week accusing the show’s producers, engineering consultants, and others of negligence in the design and operation of a mechanical lift that Mr. Curry was using onstage when he was hurt. The 27-page complaint, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, contends that the producers and other defendants knew the lift could be dangerous for “Spider-Man” cast members and put no safeguards in place to prevent injuries. No evidence is included in the legal filing to support these claims that the lift malfunctioned or that its computer software was defective. Mr. Curry asserts in the complaint that he and other cast members were told the lift was safe and that he used it “in accordance with the instructions.” A spokesman for the “Spider-Man” producers, who have maintained that Mr. Curry’s injuries were the result of human error, said on Friday that they had no comment. The lawsuit — which was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, but not made available to the public until Friday — does not shed much new light on the actual cause or extent of Mr. Curry’s injuries, which occurred during the Aug. 15 performance of “Spider-Man.” As the second act was underway, Mr. Curry, 23, found his foot caught between the lift and the stage, the complaint stated, resulting in “serious and protracted permanent injuries.” An earlier court filing by Mr. Curry’s lawyers, in September, stated that he had undergone “surgeries and amputations,” leading to much concern among actors and others about the condition of his foot. A lawyer for Mr. Curry, Elias N. Fillas, speaking in a phone interview this week, declined to discuss what the amputations involved, only saying that Mr. Curry was out of the hospital but continuing to receive medical care and physical therapy. According to the complaint, Mr. Curry will not be able to dance or perform and earn a living as he once did, and has spent “large sums of money” on medical care. Mr. Curry is suing the producers, led by Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, and several engineering and technology firms that worked on the show, as well as the owners of the Foxwoods Theater and the musical’s general manager, Alan Wasser Associates. The “Spider-Man” producers, in citing human error, have never pointed the finger at Mr. Curry. But an internal investigation concluded that the computer-controlled scenery had not been the cause of the accident, and that there had been no computer malfunction, the producers said. No other cast members have publicly reported injuries involving the lift that Mr. Curry used. The “Spider-Man” production, which closed on Broadway in early January after three years of performances, was laden with special effects and automated scenery, driving up the budget of the show to a record $75 million. Over time, several cast members were injured. In December 2010, a few weeks after performances started, another ensemble member, Christopher Tierney, sustained broken ribs and other internal injuries when he fell 20 feet from a stage platform because his safety tether was not properly attached. (Mr. Tierney recovered and returned to the show.) The actor who replaced Mr. Tierney, Joshua Kobak, said he was injured as well, and filed a $6 million lawsuit against an equipment provider. About TBook Collections

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