The Spider-Man Musical Is So @#$%ed

?After learning of the ridiculous title, seeing director Julie Taymor’s hideous character designs and hearing Bono’s douchetastic anthem, I think we’ve all been enjoying the difficulties that the Spider-Man musical have been going through. Well, if last week’s news of two stuntmen breaking limbs on a single stunt was a schadenfreude sandwich, get ready for a fucking turkey dinner. From the NY Times:

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.

So let’s see if I have this straight: It’s November, and as of this moment, they still haven’t figured out the stunts, the dialogue, where the music fits on, all the shit in-between the songs, and how to change the various sets. I’m hardly a Broadway critic or anything, but it seems to me that 80 FUCKING PERCENT OF THE ENTIRE SHOW. What have they actually finished? The songs and the ridiculous costumes? Fucking outstanding.

The delightful cherry on this cake of doom comes from Taymor, who says about the new January premiere is “The perfect date.” This means she’s either insane or lying. Yeah, good thing all those massive, entertainment New York holiday crowds won’t be able to see the show, Julie. If they saw it, they’d know how awful it was — assuming they didn’t get killed when a stuntman launched into them from across the theater. (Via Robot 6)