Archives for June 15, 2011

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has finally opened, and my review is in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt.
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If beauty were really only skin deep, then “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” would be the perfect musical. Every cent of the $70 million budget is visible. George Tsypin’s sets, Kyle Cooper’s digital projections and Eiko Ishioka’s costumes have been melded into an exquisitely exact stage equivalent of the sharp-angled, high-contrast drawing style of the Marvel comic books in which Peter Parker and his web-spinning alter ego first came to fictional life. The show’s sheer visual dynamism is staggering–but except for one great performance, it has little else to offer. It’s the best-looking mediocre musical ever to open on Broadway….
Poetry, not special effects, is the engine that drives lyric theater, and “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” is as unpoetic as you can get. Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa’s book is flabby and witless. The score, by U2’s Bono and The Edge, sounds like a double album of B-sides (“Don’t think about tomorrow/We’ve only got today”). Not only are the songs forgettable, but they never succeed in generating any dramatic momentum–all they do is get louder. As for Mr. Carney and Ms. Damiano, they’re pretty, bland and devoid of charisma….
Outside of the décor, what does “Spider-Man” have going for it? The bad guy. Patrick Page is a classical actor of high distinction whom New York playgoers will remember as the mercurial Henry VIII of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s marvelous 2008 revival of “A Man for All Seasons.” Mr. Page has a voice like a cathedral organ and enough charisma to blast Mr. Carney off the stage and into the next county, and you can tell that he’s having a grand old time playing a super-villain….
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Read the whole thing here.

Booker T. and the MGs play “Time Is Tight”:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything.”
James Agate, Ego 4