It just keeps getting better…well, depending on what your definition of “better” is.
Last weekend we shared news of yet another actor getting injured on the set of the “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” Julie Taymor’s Broadway musical about our friendly-neighborhood webslinger. The folks behind the scenes played it off as normal for big elaborate shows to have a few injuries but the New York State Department of Labor wasn’t having it. They came in to investigate the safety of the production and its big, dangerous stunts earlier this week, but they weren’t able because the production wasn’t quite ready to demonstrate everything.
So they got shut down. Well, temporarily, anyway. Instead of opening for previews on November 11th (with the official premiere slated for December 21st), the previews will start on November 28th and the show will premiere on January 11th, 2011. Again seemingly content to downplay the palpable risk involved with the show, producer Michael Cohl kinda-sorta whitewashed the whole affair, saying “Shows like ours, that embrace the challenge of opening on Broadway without an out-of-town tryout, often need to adjust their schedules along the way.”
Here’s a hint, Mr. Cohl: If your shit’s gonna kill somebody on Broadway it woulda killed ‘em anywhere else.
Luckily, the Department of Labor is hip to things like common sense and not wanting actors to die, so they set up a second inspection visit, refusing to sign off on the production until they can verify everything is up to snuff.
Source | THR
9 comments
I worked on the Indiana Jones stunt show at Disneyworld and we had fewer injuries in two years than this show seems to have had even before it opens. Something ain't right.
This show was a bad idea from day 1. My feeling is the Spidey fans will loathe it, the general public will be baffled, someone will get badly injured sooner or later, and the whole thing will get written off by late next year as a colossal financial disaster. Think the Lord Of The Rings musical multiplied by ten.
Hmmm isn't this show a safety hazard to all of us? I'm just saying…;)
As a playwright (yes, that's what I am) it makes me very happy to see this project crash and burn. This sort of mega-production is pretty much the antithesis of what actual theater is. Theater is not a circus, nor does it feature Bono. In any capacity whatsoever.
I agree with you Magic of velcro. Its this kinda nonsense that killed theater for a lot of people. Julie Taymor belongs teaching theater in a community college somewhere. Not mounting ridiculous productions on broadway and in hollywood.
Actually, actual Theater/re/urrr was often a circus. It also usually featured a "Bono", if by that you mean a celebrity name.
You're actually writing about fairly recent developments in theatrical performance that are no more, or less, valid than any of its other forms. More interesting? Depends on your tastes. More real? That's quite a loaded descriptor now isn't it? More honest? Really? Cynicism aside, finding honest personal artistic expression in theater involves wading through quite of bit of high school melodrama, both on stage and off. Where the pretense of honest expression is reduced to a slug line that inspired the piece from patron down to plebe. Dolled up with the familiar creative tics of the name(s) behind the work and the pedigree of all involved it's truly rare to find something genuine, something truly honest amongst all the artifice. At this moment, it could actually be a circus. That circus could feature Bono and have been underwritten by corporate sponsors. Probability is low for more than delightful stagecraft, but it could happen. You aren't the boss of theater. Theater hates you enough already…how are you going to love it enough that it cares about your art if you just shit on it's history while claiming to be a proponent of it's true form?
Cheers!
I thought this was CINEMATIC Happenings Under Development, not Theater Dicks Fight Over What Theater Is.com
As a Spiderman fan from New York, I was psyched to see this. Still am. I worked in theatre. Have had my original play produced and performed on both coasts, and love the shit out of "Wicked", which may be the finest Broadway musical I've ever seen. Musicals and dramatic theatre, on Broadway, are two separate animals. One can enjoy the over-the-top theatricality of a musical, while still digging into a taught, well-acted piece.
@ #6: Sure, theatre has a tradition of incorporating circus elements dating all the way back to its beginnings, because you always had to play to the cheap seats. But times have changed: there are no cheap seats anymore, though you wouldn't know it from the product Broadway throws up every season. This SPIDER-MAN just strikes me as sorta emblematic of all the reasons Broadway has become creatively corrupt. And @ #7: Being a theatre dick is fun! You should try it. #6 has perfected the form.
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