The UK Guardian LOVES Spiderman!!

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 2/14/11 at 6:54pm

"Taymor's visual sense...is...spectacular!"


"These ominous portents are borne out by the production itself, which is baffling in its ineptitude. Never has $65m looked so cheap. Leaving aside the lazy illogicality (secretaries in Peter Parker's newspaper office use typewriters yet his editor makes jokes about the internet - sorry, which decade is this?), it's the failure of the play's two strongest assets that puzzles: Taymor's visual sense and Bono and The Edge's music. The scenery is dull and the much-vaunted flying sequences are no more spectacular than any cut-price circus. The actors have the look of the orchestra aboard the Titanic, valiantly doing their best though they know this ship is going down.

What Taymor's phenomenally successful The Lion King did for Elton John, Taymor's Spider-Man is not going to do for U2. The tunes are weaker than the cables that have proved so inconsistent in supporting the performers. Even a U2 sceptic must grudgingly admit Bono can knock out a tune about the most banal subject. But the music in Spider-Man is deadening in its mediocrity, tuneless and forgettable, with rhymes that rarely employ words of more than one syllable. The one musical segment that has any kind of momentum comes when Peter flies, and that is only because the music sounds suspiciously like the opening of Where the Streets Have No Name. Personally, I had to detox sonically afterwards by listening to five Cat Stevens songs in a row. And I don't even like Cat Stevens.

It is a testament to how too much money leads to self-delusion, nerviness and, ultimately, a giant mess. Wall Street could have told Taymor that years ago."



Read more: https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Latest_SPIDERMAN_Review_UK_Guardian_Says_baffling_in_its_ineptitude_20110214#ixzz1DytEUvDq