Sunday, February 20, 2011
Spider-Man: Broadway Isn’t The Finish Line
2AMt: "What I haven’t heard mentioned in articles and reviews about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is that, in 2011, for a mega-musical of this kind, Broadway is just an out-of-town tryout. Instead, the producers’ goal is to have a show that will eventually be up and running in a few dozen cities on six continents, simultaneously.
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4 comments:
I have many issues with this entire concept. First, the Spiderman producers made specific alterations to the theater in order to make the special effects done in the show possible. Yes, the show could conceivably design adaptable scenery and effects technology, but that just sounds like more dollar bills to me. This article gives Tarzan as an example of a "flop" that found success in touring, but Tarzan seems to lack the sheer immense amount of "flop" that Spiderman is carrying. The amount of money put into Spiderman, and the amount lost, cannot be compared to any saved "flop". This whole idea sounds like a way that Producers are trying to comfort themselves and live in denial. What theater would want to provide the show a venue, who knows. The venue's opening night might be pushed forward for years.
I think a fair case to study for the sake of argument with this article is the Lord of the Rings musical. The show cost $30 million Canadian (the most expensive show outside of Vegas at the time), and was pure spectacle - The show's built around a gigantic turntable with 25 individual lifts, gigantic set pieces and a running length of 3.5 hours, yet critics panned the "Bored of the Rings". The show closed after 6 months. Reworked and revised (and only 3 hours long), the show was completely rebuilt on London's West End for another £12 million (again, the most expensive outside of Vegas), and still ran for only a year, losing much of its investment.
Now the show is looking at going on World Tour in 2011. To a certain point, I can see the producers' dogged determination in getting this show to be recognized, but taking the show on the road will be an even greater technical challenge than the two previous attempts, and the story and music still make it the "Flawed of the Rings".
At first I was shocked by this idea but then once I started thinking about it and reading the article I am now thinking this might not be a terrible move for the production team. The show is still drawing huge crowds in New York and perhaps that could translate to even more world wide. People in other countries probably won't take the same issues with the show as the New York Times do, they enjoy spectacle almost more than we do and I wouldn't be surprised if SPider Man was more successful on other continents.
I'm with Jackson on this one...I don't think it's that bad of an idea. While I do understand what Ariel is saying about the producers being in denial, I still think that the show may have a shot elsewhere. New York City Broadway audiences are not the right audience for every show...maybe somewhere else people will be less critical of the story and focus more on the spectacle. To use an example of a show that did well in one place and not in another, Hairspray has been very successful on Broadway but didn't last long in Vegas at all. And to go back to the Tarzan example, it seems to me that a lot of the issues with Tarzan are similar to the issues that Spiderman is having. While Tarzan's issues may not have been on as large a scale as Spiderman's issues, there's still a chance that things will work. I don't know much about the financial risks involved, but since Spiderman is gaining so much publicity, I'm sure it will do pretty well in ticket sales anywhere as long as people are intrigued to see the show that everyone's been talking about.
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