Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark
Reviewed by Kyrle Lendhoffer
Superlatives. A word that means (to some – to ME) “of the highest order of quality or degree surpassing or superior to all.”
And then there are words to describe the superlatives. Or “Super”-latives, since I’m writing about a super hero masterpiece. There are not enough of them (the superlatives) for me to adequately describe what I just saw.
What did I see, dear reader?
I saw theatrical heaven on earth.
I saw an apparition of God.
I saw Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark!
Oh, where do I begin? Perhaps with the beginning – or the beginning of the construct in my mind – that is now my impression of Spider-Man – for now that it exists in my mind, so it is mine.
So, first, the performers.
Powerful. Delicious. Bouncy.
None died, or appeared to be in danger of dying (some in the audience were disappointed with this – NASCAR barbarians!).
There were no obvious hard feelings amongst the artistic staff – Julie Taymor didn’t pull out an Uzi in the lobby. It was a celebration as well as a show. And after 181 (or 183 if you believe Brian Williams and NBC News) previews, the long celebration was overdue.
Taymor’s original vision was genius (in my humble opinion). The NEW vision (brought to us by new writer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, and creative consultant Philip William McKinley are even more geniuser (I will stick to this word – if you touch it, dear editor, you will die in your sleep).
Arachne almost disappears in the second act – no more bizarre psychobabble now. We are returned to the basic Spider-man story – will Peter get Mary Jane (of course!), will Peter learn to balance his life as mere mortal and super hero (duh!) and will Spider-man be able to turn off the dark (I still haven’t figured that part out).
The performances are, across the board, magnificent. Reeve Carney IS Peter Parker. From supple human to then powerful super-hero, Carney runs the gamut of our collective experience. And how can he not run said gamut when paired with the winsome Jennifer Damiano – beautiful, graceful – a song bird.
Tony Awards loom in future of Carney and Damiano. Bet on it. I will!
Patrick Page is also beyond wonder as Norman Osborne/The Green Goblin. A villain, yes. But a villain who is having the villainous time of his life.
Shall I give Page a Tony, too? Yes, I will.
I would call out every actor in this spectacular achievement but this review would go on too long. Suffice it to say that everyone involved in the magnificent production are soon to be Broadway legends. Just go here (http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=488485) and read all of the names. You will be glad you did.
You will also be glad to know the Bono and The Edge (they are named like characters in their own musical!) have written some of the most startlingly superb music to be heard on the Great White Way in many years.
I can’t imagine that any theater patron with a beating heart and working ears could be able to leave Foxwoods Theater without humming the very catchy songs. I say this with great resolve – Bono and Mr. Edge, please give up that silly U2 and take up musical theater full time! You won’t regret it.
In conclusion, do what you must to see Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark.
Sell your blood, or a lung or even your mother. Blood regenerates, you only need one lung and Mom won’t last forever. And neither will Spider-Man.
When it becomes the winner of the most Tony Awards in history, you will be glad you did. I’m betting on it!
What a great start to the new season! And with Rampage Of The Stegosaur set to flatten Broadway (in a good way!) this fall, it will, indeed, be a season to remember!
Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium
If they got rid of the “nerd chorus” then it is all right by me. I may see it twice!
Hey, actually they DID get rid of the nerd chorus, so you should go see it!! 🙂 i would luv to go, except i don’t live in NY. 🙁
But… it’s supposed to suck. Everyone else said it sucked. Doesn’t it suck?
Book of Mormon is the only thing that should be getting press right now. Fuck Spider-man for even opening this week!
Fuck you too
Fuck both of youse.
Fuck you all.
Fuck all of you fucking fucks.
The only clever way to salvage this show would be to toss out the script and re-work it into a campy musical-comedy. And I don’t mean that as an insult… I think it could actually succeed.
You’re kidding, right?
Not kidding.
How much did the producers of the show pay you to write this bombast?
No, no. I really loved it. You must watch it with the right mindset.
Mindset? would that be like totally stoned? or asleep? Frankly I don’t give a fig for journalistic criticism of the theatre. Such diametrically opposed opinions are not unheard of, not even rare. Let the show live or die by word of mouth.
You seem to be in the minority buddy.
Wonderful review. The last time I read such a superlative review was in my son’s middle-school newspaper.
Tell the truth: This was really written by Onion columnist Jean Teasdale, wasn’t it?
thank you for this review, I can’t wait to see it. why are critics always so negative – you are the kind of critic the world needs now!
faboofour, you beat me to it! And here I thought it was The Onion columnist’s Jackie Harvey with “The Outside Scoop”! A dead ringer for Jackie Harvey’s writing!
With all due respect to someone who, it is said, has written about theater for over 20 years, can it really be that no one has given Kyrle Lendhoffer an honest assessment that by any objective standards that the quality of his writing is tragically, stunningly, at the level of a child’s?
My only crime here is loving “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark”. The grade level of my writing ability should not be on trial here. And I want to see this child who can write as well as I.
>> “You will also be glad to know the Bono and The Edge (they are named like characters in their own musical!) have written some of the most startlingly superb music to be heard on the Great White Way in many years.”
Okay, now I *know* you’re not serious, dude. That score makes “Urban Cowboy” sound like Lerner and Loewe.
Good review. I’m glad some are able to review it with an open mind and not contribute to the “spidey-schadenfreude” bandwagon.
From what I have observed the reviews are mixed but people talk as if it has been loathed by all (because that’s what people want to think after all the shows trouble), when the truth is closer to 50% thought it was boring (after seeing it how many times in how many incarnations?), and the rest either liked it or really really loved it.
The fact is, people are more excited to see something fail than succeed, and all the hype and drama around this has fed into a culture of vultures desperate to see it fail.
Well their time is over, it’s officially out; no more reviews, jokes about it will seem stale. The show will now survive or fail on word of mouth. And from all accounts, the vast majority of the audience come out of the show very happy, with nothing but positive things to say about the play.
Word of mouth will be huge. Who doesn’t want to see Spider-Man – even those who want it to fail? They still are curious. And, once they see it, they will change their tune. It’s marvelous.
“From what I have observed the reviews are mixed but people talk as if it has been loathed by all (because that’s what people want to think after all the shows trouble), when the truth is closer to 50% thought it was boring (after seeing it how many times in how many incarnations?), and the rest either liked it or really really loved it.”
A complete lie.
If you take a look at Metacritic’s article on the latest Broadway reviews of Turn Off The Dark, you will see that – even after its latest retooling – the overall opinion is predominantly negative. Taking Metacritic’s categorisations, of the eighteen reviews it looked at, eight reviews were overtly negative and six were mixed (and even these refer to the musical as “oversized”, “overpriced” and “dumbed-down”. Only four reviews were characterised as positive, and only a few of those overtly so, with one reviewer basically calling the flight sequences superb but everything else so-so.
This attempt to repaint Turn Off The Dark as a polarising musical, instead of a much-panned disaster, is pure revisionism.
I’m sure most of the audience will come out happy. But that does not objectively make Turn Off The Dark a good musical or show, just as the fact that Twilight: Eclipse grossed around $700 million at the box office doesn’t make it a cinematic masterpiece.
I completely agree, anon, with the Twilight analogy. It’s hard to say whether it’s good or bad for Broadway to have this show running. If it’s successful, it will only encourage more big studios and investors to make shows like Spider-Man because ‘they don’t have to be good – just spectacular’. On the other hand, it’s great to have all those people employed.
How dare you compare anything with the name Spider-man on it to Twilight! 😉
And the claim that it will encourage investors to spend the obscene amount of money on a show like Spider-man is flase IMO.
To anyone looking to invest, the model for Spider-man: Turn off the Dark is a disaster. Far too expensive and trouble ridden for anyone to want to replicate.
And to claim that it’s problem is that it is vapid is untrue too. The main problem with the original production was that it was too ambitious to the point of being obscure and confusing to audiences. Nobody ever thought, “just make it spectacular, who cares if it’s good”. If that was the case they would have just made a simple storyline to start with.
The retooled version has brought it closer to Spideys roots as a tale of love and responsibility, The celebration of sacrifice made by a hero. Just because it has been simplified, and the crazier aspects removes does nit mean it is now vapid. In fact now it is just more faithful to the source material. And if you call the source material vapid, well then your opinion is simply invalid due to ignorance. 🙂
So what are investors supposed to be attracted to? An expensive license? A very difficult to recover budget? An attempt to make something too ambitious, with the knowledge they can try and salvage it weeks before it’s official opening?
The way I see it, it is a miracle that Turn off the Dark has tuned out as well as it has with the problems it has had. And it is a cautionary tale to anyone thinking they can just sign big names (US, Spider-man. Julie Taymor) and throw money at a project and have be a big success. Because right now, there is no guarantee it will be, and even if it is I hardly think anyone will be eager to replicate it’s formula.
There is simply nothing about Turn off the Dark that compares the vapid drivel that is Twilight.
I think you are wrong. I can’t speak for what Metacritc has chosen to display but there are a TON of strongly positive reviews. Maybe the positive to negative is not 50/50, I certainly have not checked them all and made a pie chart but is is far from revisionism to state that the reviews without a doubt “polarising”.
Here is a sampling of the praise. You will see there is far more than the four that you cited (27 to be exact)! I’m sure a few of these may be out of context to the overall review, but it doesn’t change the fact that most of them are unreservedly stating that it is great –
“The pundits said it couldn’t be done. SPIDER-MAN is now fantastic — in fact, sensational! A spectacular for the ages!”
-WOR Radio
“The show we all hoped it would be! A fun, high-flying adventure with New York City’s favorite web-slinger.”
-MTV.com
“Spidey soars! Clearly worth the wait! Spidey has found his heart. The score hits you too: it’s classic U2, chock full of The Edge’s signature guitar work. There’s more flying than ever — And you can’t help but feel a thrill as Spider-Man and the Goblin battle it out just a few dozen feet above your head! Tuesday night’s show received an 11-minute standing ovation!”
-Access Hollywood
“This is the audience experience show to end all audience shows and nothing should deter its commercial success. SPIDER-MAN is the high-flying show to take your kids to!”
-Liz Smith
“A visual feast! Unquestionably spectacular!”
-Chicago Sun-Times
“I went out humming one of the tunes. When was the last time that happened?”
-WCBS Radio
“Plenty of breathtaking moments. Stand-out numbers. Thrilling high-flying acrobatics.”
-RollingStone.com
“High-flying theatrics. Delivers good old-fashioned thrills, especially since there’s not a bad seat in the house.”
-E! Online
“The show’s sheer visual dynamism is staggering.”
-The Wall Street Journal
“Plenty of how’d-they-do-that moments.”
-Entertainment Weekly
“The Bono-Edge score really rocks!”
-Time
“Dazzling sequences unprecedented on Broadway! Pure stage magic.”
-The Hollywood Reporter
“An exciting web of wonder! Was it worth the wait? Definitely!”
-Back Stage
“Dazzling and awesome.”
-The Daily News
“SPIDER-MAN soars!”
-USA Today
“SPIDER-MAN looks amazing! A feast for the eyes.”
-Bloomberg
“This extravaganza soars!”
-Financial Times
“Dazzling and dizzying. Ingenious. Visually stunning.”
-Associated Press
“A remarkable achievement!”
-Chicago Tribune
“Entertaining — vastly entertaining! The biggest, fattest musical of all time. Truly spectacular! To put it mildly, I’ve never seen anything like it, in a Broadway house or anywhere else. Some of the most effective songs I’ve ever encountered in a rock musical.”
-The Kansas City Star
“SPIDER-MAN was always visually stunning, but now I care about nerdy Peter Parker and the girl of his dreams. The onstage chemistry between Reeve Carney and Jennifer Damiano is electric!”
-London Daily Mail
“Spectacular and thrilling.”
-The Village Voice
“Stunning aerials and soaring songs. Showmanship at its best.”
-TheWrap.com
“Flawlessly executed. All of the spectacle and wonder that you would expect from a $70 million Broadway production.”
-Eclipse Magazine
One week almost down. No one dead yet.
Proof, as if any were needed, that, as a group, art critics have their taste in their collective a$$e$. Ms. Taymor’s “The Lion King” was at least watchable, and enjoyable if you could get over the left-over elements of Disney formula, but “Spiderman:Turn off the Dark”….just needs to be put-down like a suffering animal. It’s the only humane thing to do. Taymor will be lucky if the unmitigated fiasco she presented doesn’t ruin her career.
Utterly disgraceful and childish review. Everyone knows this was garbage and all style over substance. U2 indeed.
Great review. I agree with all of it except I really didn’t like the songs. Not one of them, which is tough for a musical. I can’t see this show lasting as a classic. But it still is better than that piece of pungent dog poo Pee Wee’s Playhouse. There was never a bigger waste of money for ticket buyers. Restaging a 99 seat show for $137 tickets is an affront to theatre fans. And he looked like a pedophile Betty Davis. Pathetic.
I find that the songs fail at connecting on first listen. A serious problem for a musical I’ll admit. But after listening to the album several times I really found that I loved the songs.
Aufschlussreiche Informationen! Ich werde mich damit in Zukunft mehr auseinandersetzen! Bin gespannt auf neue Beitraege!
This is a joke. I am almost offended that anyone would think that this should be a standard for musical theatre.
No chance. It’s awesome. It IS the new standard.