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The Spider-Man Musical Review: Treat Or Menace?

March 23rd, 2011 by | Tags: , ,

On Friday night, I journeyed into New York City to see the show that I was destined to see. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has been the butt of many jokes and it’s hard not to join in. David Uzumeri summed it up for me nicely with the term “spiderfreude”. The whole broadway show concept, the inflated budget, the head-scratching reviews and the laundry list of injuries and mishaps has made it a phenomenon for absurdity-loving comic fans such as myself. The whole thing is too strange to exist and I knew I had to get on the train before it crashes for good.

Lo and behold my amazing, spectacular Christmas gift of tickets to see the show.

And it’s a good thing, too! The show is being closed down in a few weeks for the sake of being retooled. Best case scenario, they’re going to change a lot of stuff and I got to see the rougher draft of the Broadway show. Worst case scenario, they’re going to deep six the entire production and I got to look into God’s eyes before it was too late.

It also makes me feel less bad about going into full spoiler mode. For those who don’t want to muck through the spoilers and want the gist of my experience, I didn’t think it was bad. There are parts that are pretty awful and kind of embarrassing, but it really starts to gain steam. The performances are really good, especially Patrick Page as the Green Goblin and the set designs are so extravagant that at no point do you wonder where all those millions of dollars went. The music… I’m not really qualified to comment on. I’m no theater expert and I’m sure if I listened to them in one more go I’d have more impressions, but my main reaction was mostly, “Yes, that is most certainly something inspired by Bono.”

I should also get the obvious out of the way. No, nobody died or got horribly injured from what I saw. The only mishaps were few:

1) One of the Spider-Man stuntman guys swung around over the crowd, bounced around and ended up on a high platform where the right side of the stage cuts off. Noticed by some, he could be seen momentarily strangled by his cables before getting free.

2) The obligatory “Spider-Man: NO MORE!” scene lost a little oomph when Peter’s tights bounced out of the garbage can and fell on the floor.

3) There was a part in the second act where the curtain wasn’t closed all the way and some could get a pretty good look at one of the actresses during a costume change. Actually, scratch everything I said. This show was awesome.

I didn’t seem to have the same problem others appeared to have with how confusing the story supposedly is. While the story moved at a weird pace a lot of the time, I thought it was mostly pretty straightforward. At least, straightforward for someone who reads a lot of comic books. In actuality, the entire show is broken into two acts and each act is a mutation of the first two Raimi movies, plus a subplot about the mythological character Arachne.

The show begins with Spider-Man on a bridge as Mary Jane is about to fall to her death. The Green Goblin is portrayed as a giant 2D cutout suspended from the rafters and proceeds to taunt our hero. He’s about to make a jump for it and things stop. That’s when we’re introduced to our storytellers, the Geek Chorus. They’re three teenage boys and one’s little sister (he’s white and she’s Asian, but it’s theater so whatever) trying to put together their ultimate Spider-Man comic book. Man, Disney’s going to sue the crap out of them. According to the Playbill, their names are all taken from random Spider-Man characters such as Grim Hunter and Miss Arrow.

They can’t come up with a good follow-up to their splash page intro scene, so they decide to shelve it for later and start from the beginning. Miss Arrow explains to them the story of Arachne, the Greek story of a weaver who was so good that she challenged the goddess Athena, won and in return got her work destroyed and her suicide attempt undone by being transformed into a spider. You know, say what you will about Satan, but at least when he lost that fiddle contest with Johnny, he showed decorum. This Arachne story segues into Peter Parker telling it to his class. Obviously, we need to establish that Peter Parker is a nerd and gets bullied, but considering he actually pulls the, “Teacher you forgot to assign homework!” card, can you really sympathize with him?

It’s established that Peter is into Flash Thompson’s girlfriend Mary Jane and the two awkwardly walk home together from school. While Mary Jane shows no signs of dropping Flash, she at least has a natural attraction to Peter’s inner goodness. This makes more sense when we get a scene that shows Peter interacting with Uncle Ben and Aunt May on one side of the stage while Mary Jane deals with her drunken dad on the other and they occasionally share the same lines of dialogue. MJ’s deal is pretty straightforward. Her dad’s an asshole and she’d like to be anywhere else. Peter’s deal is more perplexing in that wise Uncle Ben’s wisdom is incredibly forced.

“Peter, why are your glasses broken?”

“Uh…”

“You were getting into fights again, weren’t you?”

“No, I was getting my ass handed to me by bullies, which is a completely different thing.”

“I will do nothing about this problem and will instead chide you.”

“I really wish bad people would get their comeuppance.”

“Peter! I’m surprised at you! Bad people being punished for doing bad things is horrible! You should rise above all that and be smart! If you use your head, all your problems will go away.”

“THAT is your advice? You aren’t even going to lay the great power line on me? Now I’m glad I’m not going to stop that burglar. Jesus Christ…”

We then move to Oscorp, where we meet the ever excitable Norman Osborn and his loving wife Emily. What’s interesting here is that for all intents and purposes, this isn’t really Norman Osborn. He’s more Otto Octavius from the second movie. There’s no Harry and no underlying corruption that any fan would recognize. He’s just a likeable scientist out to help the world with his supporting wife and like the movie version of Doc Ock, a malfunction during an experiment will kill his wife and turn him into a monster. But that’s later.

For now, it’s field trip time. He explains to Peter and the rest of the students what he’s up to. The Osborns feel that the world is going to Hell ecologically and in order to survive, mankind is going to have to speed up evolution by adding pieces of genetics from different animals and mixing it with human DNA. Between Norman and Emily, a conversation is had that establishes that they’ve been having a hard time getting funding and they absolutely, positively won’t deal with the government no matter how willing they are in fronting the cash.

A spider gets loose and bites Peter. You know how it goes. The Geek Chorus narrators then argue over whether or not Peter was bitten due to randomness or because the spider specifically chose him. Whichever it is, Peter wakes up the next day no longer needing his glasses and spends the next couple minutes bouncing around the walls of his room in a harness. He then proceeds to kick the ass of every bully who isn’t Flash while inexplicably making the high school girls swoon in another musical number.

Seeing Flash drive MJ around in his car gives him the idea of buying his own motorcycle, which he’ll earn the money for by challenging the wrestler Bonesaw. The Geek Chorus step in to discuss his Spider-Man tights and how no teenager could ever create them. The straw man argument comes from pointing out that the dumb one of the Geek Chorus group took two years of home economics and is still inept, so therefore a super genius nerd kid would be equally inept. In a bad homemade outfit, he goes on to challenge Bonesaw… or at least a Bonesaw blow-up doll.

Yeah, this is one of the more head-scratching moments of the musical as Peter has to wrestle with a giant balloon for a moment or two. Regardless, my father would later tell me that Bonesaw was his favorite character and performance of the show.

The Geek Chorus reluctantly talk about what has to happen next, which is Uncle Ben’s death. Despite the claim that they know how it has to happen, it isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. What I mean is that they alter Uncle Ben’s death in a way that’s far less dramatic. Peter gets his $1,000 with no problem. On his way home, someone steals Flash’s car and drives off. Peter shrugs it off and smiles because, well, fuck that guy. Then Uncle Ben tries to prove a point by running in front of the car and getting himself killed. He then dies while repeatedly telling Peter, “Rise…” I’ll leave the Blackest Night punchline to you.

Peter learned a valuable lesson that day. If you don’t go out of your way to help assholes, really stupid people will Darwin themselves. Ergo, SPIDER-MAN!

Also, the costume is explained by Arachne visiting Peter in a dream and handing him the tights, which she made herself. It’s established that Arachne is more or less powering him and Spider-Man is her avatar.

Now, after all this lead-up, we finally get Spider-Man. He’s revealed in a neat sequence that acts as a highlight reel. The set messes with perspective to make it look like we’re staring down the side of a building as an actor dressed as Spider-Man crawls towards us in the classic style we all know and love. He’s wearing a harness with a cable that swings him over the crowd, which is both exciting and terrifying in the sense that this is Turn Off the Dark and there’s a nagging feeling that somebody may die.

Spider-Man is shown saving a woman from a purse snatcher and later stops what appears to be Kingpin, Hammerhead and some one-eyed gangster from robbing a bank via a web net. All the characters here are wearing giant silver heads, which makes sense for Hammerhead and Kingpin, but less sense for the purse snatcher and the old lady. Just stacking on the oddball visuals, I guess.

Spider-Man is on the scene and naturally, the media is picking up on it. J. Jonah Jameson is played by Michael Mulheren and is portrayed with the same zest as JK Simmons in the movies. He’s fast-talking, is quick to correct his employees and is quicker to fire them for correcting him. Due to the man’s stature, gift for gab and off-putting flat top wig, he comes off as a white Don King. Of course, he refuses to believe that a man in a mask can save people and goes into a rant about how he’s definitely up to no good. There are no pictures of the masked vigilante until Peter walks in and offers his photos.

“Not bad. I’ll give you $20 for them!”

“$20? But…”

“Okay, you talked me into it. $15.”

“But they—”

“Fine. $12. But that’s as low as I’m willing to go!”

“I don’t think the pictures are worth—”

“Aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on? Come, now. I tell you what. Here’s $12 and some pipe cleaners.”

“But I don’t smoke.”

“Then start. Or make giraffes out of them. I don’t care. Just get me more pictures of this… Spider-Man.”

Throughout the scene, Jameson hadn’t been able to come up with a good name for the hero, but upon striking gold with “Spider-Man”, he delivers a hilarious nod to an audience member as if to single out that person and say, “Eh? You like that?” Then he walked away.

MJ is stoked that Peter is the guy who takes pictures of Spider-Man and asks him all sorts of questions without giving him a chance to answer. She wonders whether Spider-Man’s hideous under his mask or if it’s his actual skin, but Peter picks up that she has a thing for Spidey. The scene transitions into MJ’s lack of confidence in her acting abilities, especially since Flash hasn’t had it in him to check out a single one of her high school performances. Peter lets it slip that his stalker tendencies have led him to sit through every show, which appeals to MJ, especially since he keeps talking up how great an actress she is.

Now back to Norman Osborn. I’ve talked about how the musical’s take on him shares no similarity to the comic book version, but that doesn’t mean it’s all such a bad thing. Truth is, there’s a better origin in there than in the movie and I say that as a fan of that version of the character. His story is a bit more tragic here. Considering he’s experimenting with animals, protesters have caused his financers to pull out and because of that, all his employees have left him and his wife. Since they never found that all-important spider they’d been experimenting on, Norman reads between the lines and sees a different truth in the news of this spider-based masked man swinging around: someone has stolen his work and Spider-Man is a pirated output from a competitor.

This paranoia is fed by some generals who proceed to try to goad Norman into working for them else they go to his unknown competition. Norman still refuses to have anything to do with them, reluctant to be behind the creation of a new breed of soldier and tells them to leave. Feeling there’s no choice, he continues his work and convinces his wife to allow him to experiment on himself. There’s a musical number where he and Emily sing while “elsewhere” on a platform above the stage, Peter and MJ share the number with their own musical conversation. Emily reluctantly agrees to give in and Norman puts himself in a cool sciencey device that I’m sure ate up a big chunk of the budget. Stuff goes wrong, Emily tries to open the door, it explodes on her, Norman’s a freak and mourns his suddenly-dead wife. A world gone mad is to blame for what’s happened to the Osborns and so the Green Goblin will make them pay.

There’s only about ten minutes left in the act so the story is told in fast forward by the reporters telling Jameson new developments right when he was finishing up his eulogy on the dearly departed Norman Osborn (while choosing to blame his death on Spider-Man). This Green Goblin has been causing all kinds of havoc, including laying siege to an army base and killing a whole bunch of generals. He’s also captured a bunch of scientists who used to work for Oscorp and has been dropping them to the streets. When things seem their most dire, more reporters pop in with news that Spider-Man’s been able to catch those people and has been able to chase Goblin off at every turn. Jameson still thinks Spider-Man’s in the wrong, leading him to believe that Spider-Man and Goblin are in cahoots. There’s also news of Goblin stealing a piano, which at first appears confusing.

Instead, it pays off. You remember that scene in the first movie where Green Goblin had Spider-Man drugged and offered an alliance while on a rooftop? We get a better version of that. Why is it better? Because Green Goblin brought a piano with him and plays an incredibly amusing song about how he wants to “flatten Manhattan”. He’s far gone by this point, thinking that Spider-Man is in a way the baby that he and Emily always wanted. Spider-Man’s already been unmasked and is horrified to find out that Goblin’s already done his homework. Goblin namedrops Aunt May and Mary Jane as blackmail, causing Spider-Man to attack him. I’m paraphrasing, but here’s the funniest line of the show:

“Hey, come on, now! I tell you what, I’ll tell you all of my loved ones and you can torture them too if you want! We’re in this together!”

Spider-Man refuses to succumb to Goblin’s temptations of power, forcing Goblin to reveal that he has Mary Jane tied up and ready to drop off the building. Spider-Man puts his mask back on and the two have a really cool aerial fight that takes place over the heads of the audience. This part was one of the more uneasy things because having two guys carried by cables mixing it up – including a part where Spider-Man surfs on Goblin’s back – seems like it’s absolutely asking for trouble. Not to mention Spider-Man lands in the aisle a couple times. Either way, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t totally fucking cool to watch. There’s a lot of weird visual tricks here, ending with another forced perspective that makes it look like we’re staring down the side of a building as Spider-Man sends the Goblin falling to his death. Somehow, Spider-Man was able to save Mary Jane and web Goblin to the piano before sending it off into the streets below.

Yeah, our musical Spider-Man is a pretty stone cold murderer all things considered. MJ asks who he is and he remarks, “You already know who I am. I’m your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man!” before swinging up into the balcony. The curtain lowers behind MJ, but we can see through the curtain and Arachne is noticeably hovering high behind her, staring daggers at the young redhead. So ends the first act.

I should note that when Spider-Man swings onto the stage with Mary Jane after saving her, she doesn’t appear to be hooked onto anything. She’s just holding on for dear life. Hoo boy. That’s asking for trouble.

The Geek Chorus starts up the second act by figuring their story needs to be a double-sized issue. With the Goblin dead, who is going to be Spider-Man’s nemesis? Who is he going to fight now? One kid suggests Kraven the Hunter. One suggests Swarm because of how bizarre and kickass “Nazi scientist made out of bees” sounds. In the most surprising moment of accuracy of the show, the resident dumb guy character loudly proclaims that it HAS to be Carnage. The little sister says that the villain needs to be Arachne, but the others talk down at her. Arachne isn’t so much a character but a guide like Jiminy Cricket. As they argue over the rogues gallery, the ringleader decides to hell with it. He’s Spider-Man. He’ll fight them all!

The next sequence is… surely something. Think of it like a fashion runway of people in ridiculous villain costumes. Carnage looks good here and Electro has sparks coming out of his hand, but Kraven is another guy in a big costume with a giant fake head. Swarm looks pretty bad here, like someone took an action figure of the Honey Nut Cheerios bee and stuck it in the microwave for a moment. The little sister member of the Geek Chorus introduces her own original character named Swiss Miss, much to the chagrin of the other three. Swiss Miss, a metallic Grace Jones with blades and swords sticking out all over, has no reason at all to exist. She gets no lines and does absolutely nothing of note. Just a waste of resources to make what someone decided would be a cool villain design. There’s also a really odd and eyebrow-raising part where a guy dressed up as a bald, fat guy with one arm comes out. He’s identified by the Geek Chorus as Dr. Curt Connors and the meaning of his giant gut size is explained when an entire Lizard costume pops out of his chest and inflates to the point that he’s the Lizard with a bald head sticking out the back.

Spider-Man beats them through webbing and bug sprays, but during all of this, we see what’s become of Peter’s life in the year that’s past. Aunt May, MJ, his teachers and Jameson are all constantly pissed at him for being late and never doing anything right. He promises to see MJ’s performance in The Fly and follows up this tiring montage with a well deserved rest. Arachne appears to him in his dream and tries to seduce him, but he wakes up thanks to the phone ringing. MJ angrily leaves a message that it’s intermission and she hasn’t seen him at all.

The Geek Chorus basically enter the story by this point, interacting with Peter in the form of his conscience. It’s like Herman’s Head, but without the hilarious, horny fat guy. Peter can’t bring himself to tell MJ the truth (especially the whole, “I was just having an erotic dream with a half-woman/half-spider” part), so when he finds MJ, he has no way to defend himself. MJ has been disappointed in Peter missing dates with her again and again, but this is the last straw. She isn’t even that angry, but sad because she recognizes Peter as the one source of hope in her life and the one who gave her the confidence needed to star in a Broadway play. It’ll never work out, so she leaves him.

Peter is so sick of his thankless job that’s tearing his life apart, so he takes his Spider-Man costume and throws it in the trash. A homeless guy picks it up and later sells it to Jameson. Jameson decides that this hobo is probably Spider-Man himself and therefore doesn’t deserve his money. Oh, that Jonah!

Peter turns his life around and brings MJ to a club (fittingly, U2’s “Vertigo” is playing), where he shows her that he’s completely changed. He’s there for Aunt May twice as much, he’s suddenly acing his classes and I’m guessing that Jameson is finding some reason to pay him. He tells her that he loves her, which isn’t so powerful as she can’t quite hear him over the music. They embrace for a kiss and suddenly the lights go out. Their humor at the idea that their hot romance caused it all is short-lived as the Green Goblin starts to appear on all the monitors, creepily swearing that Spider-Man hasn’t won just yet.

What seemed like a simple blackout isn’t so simple. It isn’t just localized in New York, but across the world. The internet is completely gone as well. This part is also a bit confusing because different reporters tell Jameson about hearing news secondhand from such sources as television and the big screen in Time Square. Then again, Green Goblin appears to be able to turn these on at will, so it’s probably just his crazy rantings that they’re getting their news from. There’s plenty of bad news going around, otherwise. Lots of death and destruction and… a report of a bunch of shoe stores being robbed. A TV is brought in and Green Goblin laughs at how Electro, Lizard, Carnage, Swiss Miss, Swarm and Kraven are back and they are the Sinister Six!

…there are seven of them. MJ brings this up later, but still.

Oh, and Green Goblin reveals to be giving this message from within the television as he breaks through the glass and scares the reporters. Except for Jameson. He’s too stubborn and naïve to be afraid of this.

I should point out that it’s insinuated that much like Green Goblin, these other villains were also dead. What the fuck has Spider-Man been doing?!

The gigantic and misshapen monitors that cover the entirety of the stage show a music video of sorts where all the Sinister Seven members are shown terrorizing around the globe. This includes Carnage in front of the Sphinx, which begs the question of what Spider-Man would be able to do in that situation anyway. He’s not going all the way to Egypt to worry about this even if he was still fighting crime!

Remember that thing about the shoes I mentioned? That’s explained when Arachne is given a scene where she has a fit over Peter choosing MJ over her. She somehow figures that Peter’s into MJ because she has two legs and shoes, ergo, she has her henchwomen (all spider ladies like her) get her a bunch of shoes. This leads to a musical number about getting her revenge while the henchwomen dance around. Their extra legs are well put together and look realistic in their movement, especially when they try to pull off their freakish, burlesque poses. Part of the number has Arachne fantasizing about marrying Spider-Man and—let’s just move on. My brain’s beginning to sting me every time I try to remember what was going on with that. My brain’s finally developed a defense mechanism. Good for him.

Back to something resembling reality, Peter and MJ sit together outside, on top of a platform suspended from the rafters with a starlit sky in the background. They’re sitting on the fire escape, enjoying some canned food because the world’s in chaos. Despite everything, Peter’s ultimately pretty happy because he still has MJ and she even says yes when he proposes to her. It’s never brought up what’s going on with Aunt May. I mean, she has to be in complete terror at this point, living alone with no power and nobody to take care of her. Plus if Green Goblin is back, her life is in extra danger because he knows all about her relationship with Spider-Man. Yet Peter is cool with never leaving his apartment. Dick.

The next day, Peter is flustered when he found out MJ left to get groceries as the canned food isn’t good enough for her. MJ shrugs it off, not understanding the weight of how she’s showing more balls that Peter by risking her neck. At first, in a huff, Peter says they can’t be together, but MJ talks him down and Peter finally gets the confidence to tell her the truth: he’s Spider-Man. Upon mentioning it, she’s swallowed up by the bed (with smoke effects) and appears on a TV screen as being held hostage by Kraven. The Sinister Six Plus One have her on top of a rising ramp, which they’re all able to stand on perfectly no matter how vertical it gets, which is a pretty neat trick. Peter climbs up, slips and finds himself unable to stick to the ramp as he slides down.

He steals the Spider-Man costume from Jameson, who angrily demands he gives it back because he paid for it fair and square. Then he laughs when Spider-Man fails to web him in the face. This is where we get the most memorable musical number and the one I recall really enjoying, “Boy Falls From the Sky”.

Whenever Spider-Man is supposed to be shown in full costume during this song, they would have another actor portraying him. All the while, Reeve Carney as Peter Parker would walk forward in the middle of the stage in a jacket with a red, webbed design on it to represent that he’s supposed to be in costume. As he walks and sings, he’s on a conveyer belt that keeps him in place. A group of about eight Spider-Men appear behind him. You would think they would all start dancing or something, but instead, they start posing in slow motion… synchronized. The kind of classic Spider-Man poses you’d recognize. Then Peter starts running forward (in place) as the conveyer belt speeds up. It shows how in shape Carney is because this entire show must be like American Gladiators with added singing and few breaks. No wonder he’s letting his understudy pick up a lot of the slack these days.

The whole slow-motion synchronized backup Spider-Men army is insanely cool and it’s a moment where the whole Spider-Man musical concept really clicks. This whole segment is one of those things that I always needed to see and never knew it. The song gets more intense and while Peter makes attack movements, the giant, crooked screens behind him would show the likes of Lizard, Carnage, Swiss Miss and the rest EXPLODE one by one. Literally explode. I don’t know how he’s doing it, what with no powers, but he’s doing it. They try to make it as tame as possible in terms of gruesomeness, but when one of your villains is made of red liquid, it’s going to look like Dead Alive no matter how you cut it.

Finally, we’re back to the beginning. Spider-Man on the bridge with Mary Jane suspended. I’m sure we’ve all seen that cam footage of the one actor running off the edge and falling many feet to the point of a major injury. That makes this part really hard to watch live because they use the exact same audio cues (the scream and, “MARY JANE!”). No longer does Spider-Man jump after her. Instead, they fade to black and lower some Spider-Man-looking doll thing down there.

The Geek Chorus comes out one more time to discuss their ending and how Spider-Man’s really not dead but in the astral plane, leading to the big climax. It’s time for Spider-Man vs. Arachne. There’s a big web across the stage with Mary Jane in a cocoon in the background. An unmasked Spider-Man – with his lack of powers due to rejecting Arachne – is unable to do anything about it. Arachne explains that a bunch of the plot points in the last half hour were illusions by her, like all those villains returning and the world ending. The Mary Jane stuff is real, though, so that’s a big problem. Now it’s time for the final boss fight where Spider-Man and Arachne fly around the stage and then over the audience. I forgot exactly how he got his powers back to do all this, though a lot of the ending is a gigantic blur to me at this point.

Spider-Man wins and Arachne asks him to kill her as he’s earned the right. Spider-Man wants to, but he can’t. He spares her, which causes Arachne to let go of her crush on our hero. No matter how hard she pushes for him to be a spider, there will always be Peter Parker: the man. This revelation or this act of mercy allows Arachne to break the curse that Athena placed on her many years ago. She ascends into the heavens and gives Peter back his full power. Spider-Man tears through the webbing and saves Mary Jane, who sees him unmasked.

Things return to normal, but there are police sirens in the background. Mary Jane proudly tells Spider-Man, “Go get ’em, tiger,” and he swings off into the balcony. Proooooooobably should put his mask on first, but that’s just me playing armchair quarterback.

The show is over and we get the cast making the curtain call. Huge response for Patrick Page’s Green Goblin, huger response for Jennifer Damiano’s Mary Jane and a standing ovation for Reeve Carney’s Peter Parker. He appears for the curtain call in the best way possible: unmasked and being lowered down to the stage in the classic “upside-down Spider-Man on a web thread” pose. Jennifer Damiano greets him with the famed upside-down kiss and we’re done.

I finally got to cross Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark off my bucket list. Was it good? I’m not sure I can say. Was it bad? I can’t really say that either. Was it worth watching? Hell yeah. It was a spectacle and it was everything I could have expected and more. I’m always a lover of the existing absurd, so I can never hate this show. I’m genuinely curious to how it gets changed when (if) it comes back from being closed down. If it’s changed a lot or gets completely canceled after all, at least I’ll be proud to know that I got to sit back and watch comic book history explode in my face.

By the way, playing around with Wikipedia, I discovered that prior to playing Norman Osborn, Patrick Page was the Grinch in another musical. That’s… strangely fitting.

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4 comments to “The Spider-Man Musical Review: Treat Or Menace?”

  1. Wow. That actually doesn’t sound half bad. I can definitely see some things that could use changing, but I’m surprised that it doesn’t sound like the disaster I’d more or less have expected.


  2. he delivers a hilarious nod to an audience member as if to single out that person and say, “Eh? You like that?”
    I love it.


  3. “Spider-Man’s already been unmasked and is horrified to find out that Goblin’s already done his homework.”
    Aww man, when I read that, I at first thought the Green Goblin had descended into such a degree of madness that he stole Spider-Man’s homework and finished it for him.


  4. That sounds much better than everything else I’d read had given me a reason to expect. Huh.

    Btw, if the 2010 revival of “It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman” makes it to Broadway, you have to see it.