Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Designing Spider-Man: The Musical
Live Design: Oh, what a tangled web Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has woven. The most hotly anticipated Broadway musical of the 2010-2011 season instead opened the 2011-2012 one on June 14, after a record-setting number of preview performances (182) at the Foxwoods Theatre, highly publicized accidents, a change in direction and a subsequent three-week shutdown for revisions this spring, and an ever-ballooning budget, all relayed on the (worldwide) web as the work in progress generated international headlines. Read all about it on Wikipedia, etc. Suffice it to say that a joke about the show’s finances actually made it into the finished production. “I’m a $65 million circus tragedy,” wails the villainous Green Goblin at one point. “Well, more like $75 million.”
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3 comments:
As a superhero fan (especially Spiderman) and a musical fan, I am really excited for this show. I think its a great genre to incorporate into musical theatre and it will be interesting to see if other genres start experimenting with theatre.
Also the technology used in this production is stunning. If they are able to successfully run the show (without injuries) then this will be a huge step in theatre technology. I am curious if these sort of technology-dependent shows will be more common. If so, what will the other shows focus around?
I saw Spider-Man this summer, and for the sake of this article, I'm going to put aside my thoughts on the story itself (an enthusiastic "meh") and focus on the designs and tech. This is one of the first projects I have heard about that considered automation (including flying) to be considered as integral a design area as scenic, costume and lighting. PRG consulted throughout the entire process, and it showed on stage - the show achieved a quality of seamless cinematic storytelling as a result of the scenic designer and automation team working in partnership from the beginning. The further partnership with media generated some of the most stunning images I've seen on stage, such as the synchronized and automated LED walls in the Sinister Six segment (http://bit.ly/qZhPj2). The only negative thing I'll say is that with the abundance of technology and cash available, it's easy for the show to accommodate all of the biggest and craziest ideas without regard to necessarily making them marry each other. The scenic design was really more like six different ideas (forced perspective, comic book, puppetry and inflatable, all media, etc.), and while each was engaging and stunning in its own light, they just didn't mesh with each other. With the freedom to explore them all though, there was no need to pare them down or focus them. That's where Spider-Man falters - the carte-blanche nature of the production gets in the way of purely focusing the designs into the clearest and most impactful storytelling.
This article is a great launching point to allow people to see and find out how they did different things in Spiderman. The fact that they are going to update this for the next few weeks with new things is really cool and something that I will be keeping my eye on for the next few weeks. It is interesting that when you click on each of the areas that they have a decent amount of information. I am surprised that they have a lot of video of the show including the actors. They sort of show why the show was so expensive to mount and all the work that have done. I am interested to see what other things that they are going to put up
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