For 40 years, the comic super hero Spider-Man has been deploying his powers to fight the forces of darkness. Now an attempt to spin his tale of science-geek turned muscle-bound crime fighter onto the Broadway stage is tackling demons of its own.
Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark is struggling to emulate its protagonist and launch itself into the Manhattan night. The $65 million show, the most expensive musical in history, with a score by U2's Bono and The Edge and direction from the award-winning Julie Taymor, has suffered further delays, after being struck by a succession of problems including safety issues, injuries on set and difficulties in raising the huge and expanding budget.
The first preview of the show has slipped back by two weeks, with opening night sliding into the new year - just the latest delay on a run that had been scheduled to begin in February.
The core problem appears to be the inherent challenges of putting on a show of this complexity and ambition combined with the Taymor's famously perfectionist tendencies. Taymor, an acclaimed film director who has just finished a version of The Tempest starring Helen Mirren and Russell Brand, won a Tony Award for her previous Broadway effort, The Lion King.
But she also has a reputation for pushing standards to the limit. According to the New York Post there have been injuries to actors during rehearsals, including a broken wrist and injured feet.
There are also question marks around the safety of the elaborate equipment needed to make Spider-Man and other characters fly around the stage and over the heads of the audience, and inspectors from New York state's labour department are now combing it all over .
Taymor has said that in co-authoring the script of the musical she has tried to encapsulate the essence of 40 years of comics into a two-hour show. She read hundreds of comics in preparation, and immersed herself in the latest stage technologies for the flying sequences.
She also promised that Spider-Man wouldn't sing in costume. "Oh my God! Can you imagine Spider-Man singing in tights - ain't going to happen," she said.
But the production has been beset by difficulties. The team behind the musical struggled to raise the $50 million budget that was initially projected for the show and which has since risen substantially.
Rehearsal schedules fell behind. The first run-through with orchestra and cast has still to take place, and is now scheduled at the Foxwoods Theater on 42nd Street for this weekend.
The Edge and Bono will both be in attendance, a key moment for the pair who are venturing into musicals for the first time.
As musicals have increasingly borrowed from the cinema world and expanded their ambition, financial crises and technical problems have become a regular headache of new productions that have become mired in delays and cost overruns.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown which has just opened at the Lincoln Center in New York and based on the Pedro Almodovar film has been delayed twice.
Shrek the Musical, the previous most expensive Broadway show at $25 million - failed to make back its investment after a year-long run. The Lord of the Rings musical, rolled out first in Toronto in 2006 and then in London, cost about $50 million between the two locations with a cast of more than 50 actors. It suffered from mixed reviews and mishaps: a performance in London had to be cancelled after an actor had his leg caught in the moving stage.
The tribulations of The Lord of the Rings must have a familiar ring for one of its producers - Michael Cohl - who is now lead producer of Spider-Man. Cohl told the New York Times that the latest delays to the super hero musical were "all about tweaking nuts and bolts. We're slightly behind, but really it's finally coming together at long last."
But the postponement will mean that the show misses the lucrative weeks leading up to Christmas and instead has to launch into the relative theatrical dead zone of January. Even without that added set-back, Spider-Man has a job on to recoup its enormous investment.
Advance ticket sales, according to the Times, have reached $8 million That figure sounds impressive but not if you've got another $57 million to go, even if you don't count the $1 million a week it will take to run the show.
(source:guardian.co.uk)
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