Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History

by Berger, Glen

  Danny Ezralow was putting a lot of ironic spin on that name. Danny was not amused that he—an award-winning, internationally-celebrated choreographer who hand-selected every dancer in the show and expressed a perfect willingness to work with Spider-Man’s new director—had been replaced with a twenty-seven-year-old tenderfoot best known for developing dance moves for a Broadway-themed Wii video game, and being the founder of a then five-year-old Brooklyn-based dance troupe called the Chase Brock Experience.

  “Uh, no. Not yet.”

  “Have you seen his work?”

  “No.”

  “Listen, Glen,” he said delicately. “Go online. Check it out. And just . . . tell me what you think. Tell me if you think the work of Chase Brock is up to the standards of what we’re trying to do.”

  I went to YouTube. I saw some stuff. It was what it was. It was frolicky, and there were bright-colored underpants, and wiggling. I didn’t watch very carefully. I’m not the best assessor of dance. What I did know was that there was only one new song to stage (“A Freak Like Me”) and a couple of scenes in the second act that might require a choreographer’s assistance in reblocking. I told Danny there was neither the time nor the willingness to even contemplate additional choreography. Changes simply wouldn’t be happening.

  “Well . . .” said Danny, chuckling in lieu of raging, “that’s not what I’m hearing.”

  When Mr. Brock was fifteen, he took a plane to New York City from his home in North Carolina, and, with no previous New York theatre experience, landed a part in Susan Stroman’s 2000 revival of The Music Man. Two years later, he chutzpahed his way into becoming assistant choreographer on Kathleen Marshall’s revival of Wonderful Town. Four years after that, he founded a dance troupe that he named after himself. Obviously, this was a young man who knew how to find his “excessive confidence” switch.

  And it enabled Chase, within a week of being hired on Turn Off the Dark, to identify which bits of Danny’s work could do with some refinements. In short, all of them. Practically every scene in the show was going to experience Chase Brock. The last nine months’ worth of dance rehearsals went up in smoke. Moves explored and rejected back in August were discovered and considered and rejected all over again as if for the first time. By the last day in March, Erin Elliott—one of the dance captains—was meeting me for drinks, describing the scene in the dance studio in urgent, bewildered tones.

  “He’s even adding movement for the weavers when they’re kneeling,” said Erin.

  “What do you mean? If they’re kneeling, then what kind of movement could he be adding?”

  Erin put the index finger of her right hand against the thumb of her left hand. Above that, she pressed the thumb of her right hand against the index finger of her left hand.

  She’s not . . .

  Erin pivoted one finger-thumb set while putting the lower finger-thumb set above the formerly higher finger-thumb set. And so on. Up and up.

  “The weavers are doing ‘the eensy-weensy spider’?”

  “Yes.”

  “While Arachne is transforming into a spider.”

  “Yes!”

  “No. No fucking way. I don’t believe you.”

  “Glen, yes.”

  The dancers were stupefied—weren’t the problems with the show all having to do with the script? Why were all the dances changing? The few dancers that had banked on less work if Danny didn’t return were now getting a cruel cosmic comeuppance. And not only was all this reworking making for fatigue and frustration, it was also making for schizophrenia. The dance moves being performed at night were similar but different from the ones the dancers were rehearsing during the day. And if the exhausted dancers didn’t keep the two versions straight in their heads, the dance number would be botched, and worse, there was the risk of serious injury.

  The challenges of this schizo lifestyle extended to the actors as well. They had started memorizing new dialogue in the morning, rehearsing the new dialogue in the afternoon, and then performing with the old dialogue for their nightly performances. This situation would continue from the end of March until April 17, when Turn Off the Dark 1.0 would have its final performance.

  Even more difficult than keeping two sets of dialogue straight in the head was keeping two personalities straight. Jenn Damiano, in particular, was working hard to wrap her mind around an MJ so much less angst-ridden than the MJ she performed every night. In the current show, her “If the World Should End” was sung to a tormented, disoriented boyfriend as the city was seemingly being laid to waste by the Sinister Six. In the new version, Jenn sang “If the World Should End” snuggling on the fire escape, on a perfectly strife-free starlit evening, with her relaxed, charming boyfriend.

  If Jenn Damiano were a plant, you would say she exhibited “negative phototropism.” Which is to say, she headed toward the darkness every time given half the chance. But Phil McKinley was determined not to give her that half-chance because, damn it, this was the new and improved Turn Off the Dark, now with fifty percent less “dark.” It wasn’t going to be an easy task. He had to coach this teen-anguish expert on how to make a song sound cheery and cozy even while its title was “If the World Should End.”

  Blocks of hours were reserved for Phil to work exclusively with Jenn and Reeve. The hours were as much group therapy sessions as staging rehearsals. Phil wanted the two of them to shuffle off their brooding and furrowed brows, and start looking like they actually enjoyed each other’s company. And whether it was Phil’s counseling, or the hints of spring in the air, or just a surrendering to the inevitable, Reeve and Jenn did begin enjoying each other’s company. That spark that Danny and Julie pined for in vain back in the autumn had finally ignited.

  However, there were pockets of resistance to Phil’s upbeatification program. Through the open door of her dressing room, I spied conductor Kimberly Grigsby sitting at her piano looking so demoralized. She knew the buttons Phil and Paul Bogaev wanted for some of the songs just screamed “musical theatre,” but Bono and Edge were on tour in South America, and so were only dimly aware of the changes being made to their songs. I wanted to tell Kimberly to keep fighting the good fight, but I feared that in her eyes I wasn’t a collaborator so much as a “collaborationist”—someone who cooperated with enemy occupiers.

  And meanwhile, in the stage manager’s office, they asked me if I had heard the inspiring new motto for Turn Off the Dark: “Striving toward mediocrity!”

  Stage managers are a cynical bunch.

  “Have you fixed our show yet?” Kat Purvis asked as I walked into the office.

  “Not yet!” I chirped.

  It would become our standard greeting for the next two months, and it was packed every time with irony and rue. And whether I was chatting with stage managers, T. V. Carpio, or folks on the Tech staff, they all talked about what attracted them to the project in the first place, and then they all added the same bitter refrain: “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

  And yet, before I could feel disheartened, I would run into actors feeling like they had a new lease on life. Backstage, Patrick Page made sure to let me know how wholeheartedly he supported where the new script was going.

  “Julie kept insisting things were getting clearer and clearer in the old script. But I wanted to tell her, ‘Julie, maybe they’re getting clearer, but that doesn’t mean anyone in the audience cares.’ ”

  He was right. Very few cared about Arachne. The problem was probably fixable at one point, but . . . well, not anymore.

  • • •

  “What is happening to this show???”

  It was the first communication I had received from Julie Taymor in over a month. The e-mail had only one other sentence: “The reports I am getting are mind-boggling.”

  I vented to her. Because by April 6—just eleven days before we shut down for three weeks of Tech—the seams were coming undone. Phil’s wish list was growing by the day. He just wanted a more lucid and approachable show. Nevertheless,
the growing number of staff grumbling about both his approach and his solutions was reaching critical mass. The associate lighting designer was writing to Don Holder that Phil was fixing things that weren’t broken and “breaking things that are fixed.” Don Holder admitted he hadn’t returned Phil’s most recent call “as I worry that I may say something (or several things) I’ll regret later.” Rob Bissinger, meanwhile, was warning George Tsypin that if no one put the brakes on Phil’s new vision for the show “it will only get worse.” If the design team’s attention continued to be diverted to the items on Phil’s ever-growing list, it could scuttle the whole schedule. Finally, Michael Cohl told Phil he had forty-eight hours to cut his wish list in half.

  Although many people were characterizing the changes Phil sought—from the costumes, to the set, to the script—as ones that would make the show “a theme-park entertainment,” there were those who didn’t see a problem with that. Upon reading the new script, Marvel representatives were telling Phil “you’ve given us the show we’ve always wanted.”

  Bono and Edge, however, were calling from Buenos Aires with a different opinion. With their encouragement, I lobbied Phil for some alone time with the script to “massage” some of Roberto’s material. But the request went nowhere. After all, wasn’t I the guy who wrote 1.0? He didn’t seem to remember me sitting across from him at his own interview. Well, I figured, I could always tell Roberto what I thought of some of the writing. After all, he said he had no ego involved, and that he welcomed a frank exchange of opinions and ideas. So I told him what I thought. It didn’t go so well.

  Note from Glen to Roberto: “Hey man, just wanted to apologize again for any insensitivity on my part on the phone.”

  Note from Roberto to Glen: “I know you weren’t doing ANYTHING intentional, Glen. As Stan Lee would say, ‘ ’Nuff said.’  ”

  Stan Lee had a “Stan’s Soapbox” column in the issues of Marvel Comics that he edited. In the column, he’d often end a sincere or lofty thought with “ ’Nuff said.” I’d take any of those clichés—“It’s water under the bridge”; “We’re cool”; “It’s all good”—anything to get past the grudge bearing and move on.

  I’m going to strive to do better.

  • • •

  In the rehearsal notes sent out on April 14, I noticed a request for the costume department to generate T-shirts with the phrase GOBLIN’S GODDESSES printed on them. Apparently it was for the new number at the top of Act Two.

  “ ‘Goblin’s Goddesses’? What the hell is that?” I asked Roberto. He didn’t know either, but wondered: “Is that a Charlie Sheen reference?”

  Oh God. It’s probably a Charlie Sheen reference.

  That month, the actor Charlie Sheen was reaching the climax of his career implosion. He had become a wild-eyed, self-destructive media magnet, which was probably why articles had been referring to Turn Off the Dark of late as “The Charlie Sheen of Theatre.”

  With a bit of research, I found out that Charlie Sheen called the ladies in his life “his goddesses.” Stage manager Randall joked to Phil during rehearsal the day before that the female dancers in “A Freak Like Me” should be called “Goblin’s Goddesses.” It was meant as a joke, but Phil liked the idea, and by the end of the day, new costumes were being ordered.

  Most everyone on the original creative team shared Julie Taymor’s nausea for disposable pop culture. For years, it wasn’t unusual in a Turn Off the Dark meeting to hear a reference to composer Krzysztof Penderecki, or “grotesques” in ancient Japanese setsuwa tales. And now? A costume referencing the extracurricular activities of a sitcom star was going to be in the show. Phil’s response, of course, would be that using a Polish composer known for such works as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima as a reference point pretty much summed up what went wrong in Turn Off the Dark 1.0. Point taken. But Charlie Sheen?

  “It’ll date itself inside a month!” I squeaked to Roberto. I had reached number sixteen on my list of why the idea was a bad one.

  “So you want me to deal with it?” Roberto asked.

  Yes please.

  So Roberto casually noted to Phil that his wardrobe request was for Act Two, scene one, but the Goblin wasn’t actually named “the Green Goblin” until Act Two, scene four. Therefore, T-shirts saying GOBLIN’S GODDESSES wouldn’t really make much sense.

  “Shit. You’re right,” Phil said.

  Nicely played, Roberto.

  • • •

  “Have you fixed our show yet?”

  “Not yet!”

  “Well,” said Kat Purvis one day, “it won’t be fixed until ‘Think Again’ is back in.”

  “You think so too, huh?”

  I urged Kat to work on Phil. Be subtle, but persistent. I tracked down others who felt similarly about “Think Again” and asked them to do all the lobbying for the song they could muster. This was two weeks previous, and now the little campaign was bearing fruit. Phil announced that “Think Again” was back in the show.

  I ran to find T. V. Carpio as soon as I heard the news—she had a song back! One that showcased a whole other side of her character! She could be more than just the “Gentle Lady Spirit Guide”! But she didn’t seem happy.

  “What’s Arachne’s point now?” she sighed. “Why even keep her in the script at all?”

  T. V. said she was trying hard to be a good little soldier, but she was also talking to Julie on the phone regularly, and those conversations weren’t full of happy talk about Phil. Phil was asking her to sing full-lunged with what’s called “a Broadway belt,” and with more vibrato; i.e., to sing in the exact opposite way Julie wanted her to sing. It was messing with her head. Her attitude during that whole month was mystifying our new director, who had been earnestly trying to get through to her but was now speaking openly to Roberto and me about replacing her.

  T. V. couldn’t decide if maybe it would be a blessing to be fired. Several dancers were expressing similar sentiments later that evening. They had just come out of a bewildering meeting that Phil had convened with the dancers, all of whom were looking forward to airing their grievances, and talking about the process going forward. Phil had already gotten on a soapbox to tell me the problem with Julie’s relationship with the company was that she didn’t listen to their concerns.

  “I just want you to know,” said Phil sympathetically to the dancers at the top of that meeting, “if you have a problem, any problem at all with the direction this show is taking—with how rehearsals are being run—really, I mean it—with anything at all . . . you can leave.”

  One of the dancers quit the show on the spot. There were smiles in the Telsey audition room the day Julie and Danny cast her. And now she was gone, and there were a few more on the ledge that evening. These dancers were feeling exploited, expendable, and unworthy of having an opinion. If Phil had good intentions—giving disgruntled company members an easy way out of their contract instead of forcing them to continue in their indentured servitude—his gesture still managed to come off as misguided. The meeting did achieve the one result Phil was looking for, however. It silenced dissent. I kept underestimating Phil. He had clearly learned that if you want to keep trapeze artists and poodle trainers in line, sometimes you need the velvet glove, and other times, the iron fist.

  I reported the latest to Edge and Bono, who relayed their concerns to Michael Cohl, who then called me to yell at me: “I should just fire you all!” he shouted. And coming from a guy who had just fired some people, the line had some bite in it. He followed up his yelling with a letter.

  I bet on Julie and Julie’s team. They failed me. Not one deadline was ever met. So now it’s in Phil’s hands. Stop second-guessing him. That’s for the Julie Camp people. It’s a closed chapter. P.S. Did u sign your contract?

  I saw now that Michael Cohl was a serial monogamist. Fiercely loyal, he remained devoted to Julie long after he was warned she was heading off-course. And now, in order to be fully loyal to Phil, his disenchantment with the old
team had to be total. I mean, it was hardly accurate to say, “Not one deadline was ever met.” That said, there did seem to be a greater adherence to the schedule under this new regime. One reason, of course, was that the Tech crew was now well seasoned after all the months of trial and error.

  But there was another reason the trains were running on time. Her name was Eileen. Eileen the Unsung. She had been Phil’s assistant for years—so many years that I could never retain the exact number, because it always hurt my brain to contemplate it. She was by Phil’s side for circus gigs in Florida, a Ben Hur Live spectacular in Germany and London, and on Broadway for The Boy from Oz. She had devoted her life to anticipating what Phil would need before Phil knew he needed it. And now with clipboard and laptop, she was shuttling back and forth between the stage manager’s office and the stage, and then up to the rehearsal rooms, and then over to the technical director’s table, all the while constructing schedules, organizing meetings, reminding, revising, facilitating, and getting less sleep than anyone in the building.

  Such selflessness, it was almost self-abnegation. But no mere lackey, she was the only one familiar enough with Phil to rap him hard on the knuckles whenever he needed disciplining. Julie had personal assistants, but she never had an Eileen. Perhaps the autumn of 2010 would have gone differently if there had been someone like that. But yes, as Michael wrote, it was a closed chapter.

  • • •

  “Today is a sad day,” Julie wrote me. It was April 17. And the theatre was shutting its doors to the public for twenty-four days after that afternoon’s performance. In just a few hours Turn Off the Dark 1.0 would be turned off for good. Danny was in town to make a surprise appearance, and to hug the dancers. Julie wanted to know: “Have Bono and Edge seen the new rewrite and direction and choreography?”

  In fact, the composers hadn’t seen the new direction and choreography yet. But they were coming back to New York soon. And they had seen the latest rewrite.

  Glen, it’s your fretful-not-in-the-neighborhood-but-friendly rock star here. I am extremely worried about the corniness that’s crept into the script. Confidentially, I have raised the alarm with MC in quite a dramatic fashion and I expect Phil will feel what I’m saying soon. I think they will look more and more to you to rebalance the ship.