So yes, I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark last week. Here is what I thought:
It was both great and awful, so that's pretty good—and I was certainly left wondering what I missed out on by not seeing the earlier, supposedly disasterous version of the musical.
I liked the show whenever something was happening that involved Spider-Man and at any point when Peter Parker was just Peter Parker and talking with Aunt May or Mary Jane I tried to sleep. When Spider-Man was swinging around or the villains were on stage or the sets were transforming, that I liked. Listen, I've never been to Cirque de Soleil or De la Guardia or Fuerza Bruta or Blue Man group or even very many birthday parties with magicians so I'm impressed by stage tricks and people swinging out over the audience and video projections and ramps rising up and treadmills rotating and stuff like that. The music? Eh, whatever. But it was particularly bad during Peter's "Bouncing Off the Walls" spider-power discovering scene. I guess it's hard to both sing and bounce off of walls at the same time.
Definite highlight of the night: At the end of Act One, as Norman Osborn is transforming into the Green Goblin, the lights are going off and on and it's loud and there's screaming and everything is total chaos, during that this little kid comes tearing up the aisle for the lobby screaming "I want to go home! I want to go home!" with a parent running after them, many paces behind.
There is a slightly similar story told at my house about when my parents took me to Peter Pan at that age. But I was a bit more apprehensive than terrified.
Ah, the theatre!
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