Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that no one really knows the perfect recipe for a Broadway smash-hit. Among the long list of musicals which opened this season are an adaptation of Beetlejuice, a jukebox musical about the Temptations, and a wonderful retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It seems as if anything could take New York by storm at this stage, and yet when the ill-fated Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark opened in 2011, the theatre community was far from impressed, and the show has become one of the most famous flops in Broadway history.

With an excessive amount of financial backing, Bono and the Edge as songwriters, and a plot that was fully cemented in popular culture, Spider-Man should have been a sure-fire hit, and yet its potential was somehow squandered. There are several reasons for this, the first being that the score just isn’t very good, however, that’s nothing new. Ultimately, Spider-Man failed to make the big time because it was doomed from its very conception, and was already despised by the time the curtain eventually rose for the first time.

It seems absolutely astonishing that no one thought to put the brakes on between the initiation of the project in 2002 and its eventual opening in 2011

Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is infamous for its exhaustive list of mishaps, from cast injuries and replacements, to fundamental issues with the book and music which resulted in a preview period of 182 performances, the longest in Broadway history. In addition to this, there is of course the fact that the production rang up a debt of over $70 million. It seems absolutely astonishing that no one thought to put the brakes on between the initiation of the project in 2002 and its eventual opening in 2011.

Had the show somehow managed to recoup some of that debt, it may have been mildly less disastrous, but the crux of the matter is that the show was rather average, and closed in January 2014, leaving investors $60 million short. Ben Brantley of the New York Times declared upon its opening that “if I knew a less-than-precocious child of 10 or so, and had several hundred dollars to throw away, I would consider taking him or her to a new and improved Spider-Man”. Indeed, the overwhelming consensus amongst critics was that the show was fun, but not a worthy fruit of a developmental process which spanned almost a decade.

It begs the question of who the target audience might have been to begin with

To give credit where it’s due, the show featured impressive costumes and sets, both of which earned Tony nominations, but after making headlines with stories of actors falling from the set, audiences felt more than a little uneasy. This is especially pertinent given the fact that the climax of the show featured a fight between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin which took place above the audience. Reports suggest that, whilst the sets were impressive, they acted as a double-edged sword, with the show being halted repeatedly due to technical difficulties. Therefore, it was difficult for even high-budget sets and costume to make up for the lacklustre plot and forgettable score.

After such a long developmental period, and multiple rewrites, the show really ought to have been something to write home about. Even the story itself, which should have been the easy part, is slightly strange, and does not seem to follow much of the canonical source material on which it is based. For instance, Peter Parker has a weird spider mentor, and the impact of Uncle Ben’s death seems to have been removed completely. Seeing as the show was obviously designed to bring a new audience of superhero fans into the theatre community, deviating from accepted canon seems to have been an odd choice. The fact that such drastic alterations have been made to Spider-Man’s origin story begs the question of who the target audience might have been to begin with.

Spider-Man was on the back foot from the outset

Had the show been a smash-hit, it is likely that its place in Broadway history would have been more favourable, but with so much negative press before opening night, Spider-Man was on the back foot from the outset. With the show unable to break even, despite running for three years, and with only elaborate but slightly risky costumes and sets to its credit, the bad press only continued. Five years after the curtain fell for the final time, it seems unlikely that Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark will have a life beyond its initial, problematic Broadway run.