Sing It, Spidey!

Somewhere, the Green Goblin is laughing his ass off about this.  Playbill is reporting that the long-delayed musical Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark will finally be coming to Broadway.  Directed by Julie Taymor (a Tony winner for The Lion King), the show will start previews with a 3pm matinee on November 14, with an opening night set for December 21, 2010.

According to the show's press notes, "Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark spins a new take on the mythic tale of Peter Parker, a teenager whose unremarkable life in Queens is turned upside-down—literally—when he's bitten by a genetically-altered spider and wakes up the next morning clinging to the ceiling. Bullied by his classmates and tortured by an unrelenting crush on next-door-neighbor Mary Jane Watson, this science geek discovers he has suddenly been endowed with astonishing powers. He soon learns, however, that with great power comes great responsibility. Maligned by the media, buffeted by financial woes, and stretched thin by the expectations of the world-at-large, Peter now must struggle to navigate the perilous and peculiar demands of being a web-slinging superhero."

I'm not sure if any of that is really "new," except for the fact that Spiderman will now be singing songs by Bono and The Edge.  And I'm a big U2 fan, so that's the only part of this that has me interested in at least listening to the cast album.

The show's producers should know all about financial woes.  Spiderman was originally scheduled to open back in February, but financing issues caused the production to be shut down before rehearsals even had a chance to start, leaving the producers scrambling to find additional investors.  With the fate of the show uncertain for several months, original leads Evan Rachel Wood (Mary Jane) and Alan Cumming (Green Goblin) were forced to drop out of the production to pursue other projects.

But it looks like the producers have gotten their miracle and the show will go on after all.  The press release does not mention who came to their rescue, but it does mention that Spiderman's home the Hilton Theatre will be renamed the Foxwoods Theater by opening night.  Hmmm....

Reeve Carney will be making his Broadway debut as Peter Parker/Spiderman.  His credits include Taymor's upcoming film The Tempest, and he also performed on one of the tracks of Michael Jackson's HIStory.  Jennifer Damiano, a Tony nominee for Next to Normal, will play Mary Jane Watson, and Patrick Page, best known for playing the title role in Broadway's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, will take over the role of the Green Goblin.

Will the show be a hit?  Hard to tell.  While the production was in limbo for most of the year, the rumor was that even if it did open, the running costs were so high that it would have to run at capacity for at least five years before it would even turn a profit.  It's opening at a huge theater, so it would have to be a hit of Lion King-proportions for that to happen.  That's tough.  Then again, stranger things have been known to happen on Broadway.

You can take a look at a sketch of the Oscorp Labs set below.  You can find out more info regarding tickets on their official (and finally updated) website.