Spiderman Preview Thread! — Page 33

Yeah... The producers didn't like Conan's jokes.
https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/SPIDERMAN_Team_Not_Laughing_at_Conan_OBrien_20101204

O'Brien received a bouquet from the production which said, "We hope you enjoy the flowers. It was cheaper than a cease-and-desist."

Just saw the show tonight. Yowza! The first act is mediocre--the songs are silly and the plot doesn't really go anywhere, but there are some great visuals, and you can hold onto that hope that the pieces will all come together. But that second act! Holy crap! The book, the score, the design, the concept...EVERY piece goes off the rails.

To comment on the safety of the show: it looks much, much safer than any Cirque du Soleil show I've ever seen. Yes, there have been injuries, but watching tonight, I couldn't see where the Arachne character was in any more danger than, say, Jane Krakowski in Nine. I don't have the impression from watching it that it's terribly likely more people will be injured. And for the people freaking out, haven't there been a fair number of injuries at other shows--Wicked comes to mind.

But that's neither here nor there. Julie Taymor is a visionary in the strictest sense of the word, yes. She is possibly one of the best designers around. But I'm not fond of her directorial work other than The Lion King. Juan Darien and The Magic Flute left me cold. And I despised Titus and Across the Universe. She has incredible ideas, but she never seems to harness them terribly well. The Lion King is the exception, and I do wonder if since that was her most commercial project to date at the point, she simply had to cede some control to someone who could edit her.

The failure of Spider-Man isn't primarily her fault, though, in my eyes. I really think the heaviest blame has to lie on Bono and The Edge. The music is a disaster. It simply fails on every level. It isn't exciting rock. It doesn't move the action forward in the slightest. It doesn't create mood. And Arachne's shoe song in the second act is the most horrifyingly bad thing I've seen in any Broadway show since Brooklyn. And when you can actually make out words, well...it makes you wish you couldn't.

I saw some really nifty flying, and I got to look at some pretty things on stage. Other than that, the show really doesn't offer anything exciting, memorable, or even coherent. It's unfollowable for children and unengaging for adults. This will likely stick around for awhile--hell, The Addams Family is still performing well. But it's an enormous disappointment.

Lol -- you DO think that'd be menitioned one way or another!

(Maybe THAT'S the rope that hit Arachne in the head!)

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Where were your seats, SAUJA?

How was America as Arachne?

I heardWeds and thurs had one stop each, but I don't know about Fri/Sat nights.

I heard its still running about 3:10.

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A family member was there last night; I got a text at 9:27 that she was at intermission and there was one short stop in the first act. She liked the second act better than the first because she thinks they decided to actually tell the story rather than just fly around the theatre. They got out around 11:12.

Where is everyone getting the music from the first Preview??

"If they were smart, they would never open and preview undefinitely."

I'm at a loss for the link - but I remember backstage footage of Carrie when it opened, when a cast member directly said: "We should've never opened. We should've previewed and previewed and previewed."

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Sadly, I'd rather watch this than the actual show at this point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ek9WHPubwQ

Or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3wmrX_rdFE

Updated On: 12/5/10 at 04:31 PM

...and with a whopping 2 signatures. What an obnoxious waste of bandwidth. What do they expect to accomplish with this petition?

Updated On: 12/5/10 at 05:11 PM

Yep, there was one stop last night that was about two or three minutes long. And it ran just over three hours.

America as Arachne? I don't want to say much because I feel like any understudy going on in the first week of previews must be perilously underrehearsed. Let's just say that most of the performers really disappeared into the show because it's never really about the people. America...left the biggest impression.

"Their collective vision"? Obviously you have never worked with Taymor. They are working on Julie's vision.

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