Thursday, January 20, 2011
'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' previews should be reviewed
latimes.com: "Even though 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' has delayed its official opening for the fifth time, the L.A. Times' Charles McNulty says critics should weigh in on previews of the expensive musical so that audiences will know what they're paying for: a problem-plagued work in progress.
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2 comments:
There is always the same old saying that says it all: "Any press is good press." Spider-man may be getting lots of coverage about accidents and designer quarrels that would normally scare an audience but all these "catastrophes" only serve to intrigue the audience. Everybody loves to see something go wrong in a live show because it's exciting and thrilling when things suddenly go off-book and with "Spider-man" they are almost guaranteed something will happen and not only that, something extreme and extraordinary. Ignore the fact it is something almost close to fatal. People like when things go wrong and especially when they go wrong in a bad way. The show is apparently making bank on this and this reputation could continue even after they open, so why not simply open? Because if there is one thing that most Broadway show's can't recover from it's panned reviews from various Media outlets. So, are they more afraid of the negative press or is the show simply not done? At this point it may be more about the former rather than the latter.
I'm pretty certain that the producers are expecting the show to receive negative reviews. However, as the recent Riedel's article on NYPost says, I think it's much more worse for a show to receive numerous pans from the critics all on the same day, as opposed to having those negative reviews being published on different dates.
The fact is, despite charging full price for the tickets for preview performances, people are still willing to see the show that's still "work in progress" and I don't think there's any issue of postponing the opening night, especially since it is a commercial show.
Critics should definitely wait off until they are invited. If they review a show that's still being tweaked/changed around, why are they reviewing the show in the first place?
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