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

by Berger, Glen

  20

  * * *

  Rise Above

  Once upon a time, in a parallel universe, the New York Times ran a photograph, and in it, Bono was congratulating Julie Taymor in front of two thousand friends and associates. And the kiss between the two of them said it all—for in it you saw nothing but love, undying respect, a dash of triumph, and unutterable relief. It was a photograph that—for almost six years—I had already conjured up in my head as one of the indelible images destined to be generated by our show’s opening night.

  And the photograph in this universe’s New York Times looked almost exactly like the one I just described. The only difference was a barely perceptible black-sleeved arm next to Julie. The arm belonged to Phil McKinley. And so that kiss didn’t say it all. You could see the love, triumph, and relief. But you couldn’t see the gut-twisting swirl of other emotions, as well as the reams of unspoken words.

  During the last weeks of May, while previews for 2.0 were running, Julie was thousands of miles away in her hideaway in Mexico, and she was certain that was where she would be on opening night. When her assistant Jules first suggested to Julie that she come back to the Foxwoods on June 14 and take a bow, Julie scoffed. It just didn’t seem possible that everyone in this story could be on that one stage without violating some law of emotional physics. Too awkward—it strained the imagination so, no, it wasn’t going to happen. But Jules wasn’t going to give up so easily.

  Meanwhile, word of mouth was beginning to spread that the show had turned itself around. Robert Trussell of the Kansas City Star had already come out with a positive review, enthusing how “the creators pursue serious artistic ambitions while dishing up spectacle designed to get the same sort of response if you woke up one morning and saw a mastodon grazing in your backyard.” He said the score “included some of the most effective songs I’ve ever encountered in a rock musical.” It was a bona fide good review.

  Whether or not all the other critics would fall in line, at the very least, perceptions about the show appeared to be malleable again, and the producers were eager to shape those perceptions. They launched a new upbeat ad campaign that retained the old rain-soaked font for the title, but now paired it with a tagline (“Reimagined! New Story! New Music!”) in a hyper-slick, zippy font that seemed purposely designed to make Julie’s eyes bleed.

  The death of Uncle Ben was augmented. It would get better. Then worse. Then better. There would be a lot of that in those last three weeks—tweaks and cuts, and then the restoring of what was once cut, but only after a tweak. Phil’s assistant, Eileen, confirmed this was her boss’s habit as previews began to wind down. “Phil just needs to leave the theatre—for his own good,” sighed Kat Purvis, who had seen this particular mania seize many a director as opening night approached because changes aren’t made after opening night. For a director, opening night is a kind of death.

  • • •

  The show’s advance—which was ten million back in January—was now down to six million. Some days saw smooth previews with strong ovations. Other performances were rockier. Spider-men still hung impotently in the air from time to time, confetti cannons misfired, and “Freak Like Me” still wasn’t pleasing anyone. Chase, more than anyone, was eager to find a new angle for the number, but “We’ll get to it, baby doll,” was Phil’s standard response. All directing had to be put on hold until Phil returned from Los Angeles.

  In L.A., on May 25, on the season finale of American Idol, Reeve, Bono, and Edge debuted their new version of “Rise Above.” An aerialist in a Spider-Man suit flipped over the studio audience, dry ice filled the stage, and 29.3 million viewers heard a song from Turn Off the Dark. The single was released that night, peaking at a respectable seventy-four on Billboard’s Hot 100. Hundreds of comments on YouTube praising the song seemed like a mirage when they first appeared. I kept scrolling through the comments looking for some explanation other than the obvious one that people just liked the song.

  The sun seemed a little brighter, the air a little fresher. I watched the tree outside my window drop all its leaves last November. Who knew I’d see the tree blossom and now quiver with green leaves again? My landlady wanted to know if she could finally put the sublet back on the market for July.

  “That would be ‘Yes.’ ”

  The last day of May I went upstate for a quick visit home. The next time I’d be going home it would be for good. I got the kids to school. I bought mousetraps because we clearly had a problem. I mowed the lawn. I kissed the children good night. My daughter woke up and started vomiting. Maybe it was those roasted beets before bed. She was going to be fine. I spent twenty minutes cleaning her rug. And it was glorious. It was all glorious.

  And I called Julie Taymor. I knew she wouldn’t answer if she saw my number, which was fine, because I just wanted to leave her a voice mail. “You should come to opening night, Julie. Everything that makes the show great is yours. You should come. Accept the flowers. Take the credit.”

  After seeing the “reboot,” Roger Friedman—who had been a longtime Taymor-booster at his Showbiz411.com—concurred in an article a couple of days later: “Julie Taymor’s going to get a surprise. There’s just as much of her work in the show as there was to start with . . .”

  I had given up on “Freak Like Me,” but Roberto came up with a new concept that gave Phil, Chase, and the costume department something to latch on to, and they all dove into revising the scene. It was as Bono said: “When something is good, there is no argument.”

  The very last thing in the script to be scrutinized before opening night was the very first thing I ever wrote for the show. Edge and Bono thought the death of the Green Goblin had no twist, no depth of feeling, no redemption. There were meetings, e-mails, but we were out of time. Phil broke the news to Bono and Edge that this was the show.

  “The show, in my opinion, is bulletproof at this point,” Reeve Carney told Patrick Healy in an interview that week. “I mean, as bulletproof as anything can be.” Jenn Damiano told the Times, “When someone says something negative about our show now, I’m like, ‘You’re boring me—it’s not cool anymore to be negative about Spider-Man.’ ”

  Edge and Bono added an additional chorus section to the new version of “Rise Above,” with words that weren’t in the stage version of the song. While the new lyrics were a typical U2esque appeal for peace, they were also written as an intensely personal appeal to their former collaborator:

  In a time of treason

  Is there time for trust

  When there’s no them

  Only us

  Is there time for reason?

  Has your heart had enough?

  Is it time to let go

  And rise above?

  The lads were in California on the ninth of June (making up tour dates), when Bono rang Julie and talked with her for an hour—the longest and most civil chat since the chill days of February. He wanted to see her at the show on opening night. It was a sentiment even Michael Cohl was leaning toward. That is, until the next day, when the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society filed an arbitration claim on behalf of Julie Taymor to recover the $200,000 in royalty payments the producers allegedly owed her (a figure that included only director royalties, not her royalties as co-bookwriter). Of course, the Times and the Post dutifully covered the news.

  Michael Cohl was furious. These were not the headlines he wanted for his show just three days before opening night. He wanted to know if I had any inside info on whether Julie intended to show up at the Foxwoods on the fourteenth. My latest intel from Jules was that Julie was sticking in Mexico.

  “Good,” Michael said. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

  It didn’t stay that way. Because—among other reasons—on June 12, the 2011 Tony Awards were broadcast, and Julie watched some of the show. The awards were dominated by The Book of Mormon, a true smash hit, regularly breaking attendance records and snagging nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical. In humiliating contras
t, the show’s emcee, Neil Patrick Harris, challenged himself to tell as many Turn Off the Dark jokes as he could in thirty seconds (“Spider-Man is the only musical where the actors in the cast are actually in casts”). It wasn’t this wearisome ribbing of Spider-Man that got Julie thinking twice about opening night. It was seeing the performance of Reeve and Jenn, singing a tender rendition of “If the World Should End” on a fire escape: “If this world should all come crashing down I wouldn’t care at all . . .”

  Julie felt pangs of nostalgia for the cast and for the show. And a righteous feeling of ownership awoke in her. The next morning she called Jules. She was coming home. Jules texted the news to Michael that Julie would be attending. Michael Cohl texted her back. NO, SHE WON’T BE ATTENDING. The arbitration claim had snuffed any lingering impulse in Michael to accept Julie’s presence at the opening. Jules texted back, imploring him to change his mind. Michael was unswayed. In his mind, Julie had been booing and hissing from the sidelines for three months while he sunk yet more millions into the show. Any desire to see an amicable reunion was overruled by his business brain—why risk it? He implied to Jules that any attempt by Julie to go to the show would be met with legal action.

  But Julie had already landed in New York. And on the morning of the fourteenth, a hair and makeup person was at Julie’s apartment helping her get ready. A car service had been hired. There weren’t any tickets reserved for Julie at the theatre, but Jules had tickets on hold. Julie had figured she’d simply use her assistant’s tickets. However, when Jules arrived at the theatre, she discovered that Michael had anticipated that move and had those tickets pulled.

  It was two p.m. The creative team and assorted celebrities would be on the red carpet on Forty-third Street in just a few hours. And Julie Taymor, the sole director of Turn Off the Dark for over three thousand days, now had no way of getting in the door to watch it.

  I showed up early. A Turn Off the Dark open-roofed tour bus was parked across the street from the red carpet. The sun was out, with a nuzzling breeze. Camera crews had arrived and masses of equipment were being set up. The opening night party after the show was going to be held at the bowling alley around the corner. (After months of losing reservation deposits at ritzier establishments thanks to postponed openings, the general managers finally said, “Screw this. We’re having the party at the Bowlmor.”)

  Bags with various opening night gifts were lined up downstairs in the Geeks’ old dressing rooms. One of the gifts was a light switch plate, with a little rectangular hole for your light switch. Above the hole: TURN OFF THE DARK, and below it, TURN ON THE DARK. And at the bottom of the plate: OPENING NIGHT DECEMBER 21, with a bit of corrective tape on top of it, reading JANUARY 11, with a bit of corrective tape on top of that reading FEBRUARY 7, and then another piece of tape with MARCH 15, and one more piece of tape with JUNE 14.

  I stared at the thing. Whoever came up with this gift was a genius. This show clocked in with 183 previews, and starting that night it would never have another one. I was only just beginning to fathom this when I bumped into Phil McKinley near the VIP room. He had just heard from Michael Cohl, who had just heard from the show’s publicist: Julie had found a ticket. She was coming.

  “Where did she get the ticket?!” That question banged in the back of Michael’s brain for much of the evening. It turned out it came from Teese—Julie’s loyal, displaced music supervisor. Later that night, I would hear that Teese’s active involvement with the show had come to an end.

  At the Foxwoods, the cast was excited, the press agents were fearful, the producers were angry. The word was that “Julie has promised the publicist she will behave.” But she had never seen this version of the show. The press would be scrutinizing her every move. Would she seriously be able to watch the show without leaving halfway through in disgust? Would she be able to not whisper disparaging things about the show to her companions as she watched how her scenes had been mutilated? Could she truly refrain from muttering under her breath? Sighing with contempt? Even once? I just didn’t think she could do it. And I thought that because I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be able to do it. Or waitaminute . . .

  Alcohol.

  I dashed into the empty VIP room and got to work. Between drinks, I opened up my brand-new CD of Music from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. It turned out there was a man who wouldn’t be mentioned at any time onstage that evening, but Bono and Edge had remembered to put him prominently in the liner notes to the cast album: “To the memory of Tony Adams.”

  I wandered upstairs, rendezvoused with Roberto, and waited for our turn on the red carpet. Lou Reed was in the stairwell checking his phone. My wife, my parents, my in-laws—they were there somewhere. Danny Ezralow was there somewhere. Julie was there somewhere. I had pictured this night for so long, but I hadn’t pictured me floating through it, trying not to meet anyone’s gaze, trying hard to avoid the inevitable awkward “Congratulations.” Half the people in the lobby that night thought I got ignominiously replaced when Julie got the boot. Just the day before, Playbill stated that, “Bono and Edge are the only members of the original creative team still involved.” Then again, what if they thought I was still involved? There were still things on that stage I’d readily disown. Conflicted, that’s what I was. Baffled. Alone. Hey—there’s Rob Bissinger. He’ll be a good one for some commiseration.

  I headed toward him, but he thought I actually wanted to talk to the woman standing next to him, so he drifted away and I was suddenly face-to-face with her.

  Julie.

  If only there was something I could say that would fix it all. Of course there wasn’t.

  It was very loud in that lobby, so she had to get close to my ear for me to hear her. She said she had gotten my phone message. It was one of the things that persuaded her to come. She reminded me that I promised in my phone message that the new show was possibly watchable . . .“if you’re drunk.” A shared smile, in lieu of reconciling, in lieu of arguing, in lieu of . . . more awkwardness. A friend of Julie’s congratulated her, and I wandered away. And she and I never said a word to each other again.

  Over thirty minutes after the show was supposed to begin, the ushers began corralling the happily gabbing crowd toward their seats. Eventually the lights dimmed, the overture dug in, and I watched the damn show one more time. And after all the bows by everyone at the end of the performance—the designers, the crew, the co-bookwriters, the composers—Phil got the microphone and said, “There’s one person without whom none of us would be here. Julie Taymor.”

  Julie bounded onto the stage from the audience. She kissed Edge and Bono. She gave T. V. an emotional embrace. She even hugged Michael Cohl. She then sneaked back to the second row of company members onstage, not wanting to steal the spotlight. But Phil beckoned her back. And for a moment, it was there. You could see it. A glimpse of what we had all been beating our drums about for years. The briefest moment where you could actually see what a world would look like if we all would “rise above.”

  Which, incidentally, was the gift Michael Cohl gave me the next day. A tiny solid-silver disc on a chain, which had inscribed on one side: RISE ABOVE. And inscribed on the other, for some reason: INFINITE.

  Infinite. It wasn’t more than a week later that I would get a glimpse at what “infinite” could mean. I received an e-mail from Edge: “Glen, how is it going? Have you had a break from Spidey? When can we start to do more tweaks? I feel there is another 10–15% to go.”

  O Arachne—patron demi-goddess of this endeavor! of every endeavor born of the unquenchable urge to make manifest the divine stirrings within us! Be merciful and let me out of here.

  I swear I’ve learned my lesson!

  • • •

  If you want to live and thrive, let the spider run alive.

  As the reviews started coming in, we were hoping the critics would adhere to that old proverb. So were the reviews good? Bad? Well, true to form, every critic put forth an opinion so unequivocal, so unassailable, that
they all must be right. So the show must be “a Spectacular for the ages” with “the best Act Two on Broadway,” while also finding a way to be “an imbecilic entertainment for nap-loving preschoolers.” It’s “a fun family show” that was “definitely” worth the wait, and also “a bloated monster with bad music.” The show had somehow managed to be “just a bore,” while at the same time “never boring.”

  Scott Brown—the New York magazine reviewer who found a perverse appreciation for 1.0—saved no love for 2.0:

  Awash in a garbage-gyre of expository dialogue pumped in by script doctor/comic-book vet Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, its lavish stage pictures turned to colloidal mush . . . [the show] wouldn’t look out of place amid a backdrop of roller coasters and toddler vomit.

  That “theme-park” theme showed up frequently in the reviews. Many of the critics sounded a similar note to Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post, who wrote that the show was “ready to join Madame Tussauds and Shake Shack on a tourist’s Times Square itinerary.”

  And what about good old Ben Brantley at the Times?

  Until last weekend, I would have recommended Spider-Man only to carrion-feasting theater vultures. Now, if I knew a less-than-precocious child of 10 or so, and had several hundred dollars to throw away, I would consider taking him or her to the new and improved Spider-Man.

  Good enough! We’ll take it!

  Epilogue

  The day after opening, the show rang up $400,000 in sales. That was triple the daily box office before June 14. However, as Michael Riedel reported, the amount was “not good enough,” and he went on to predict that the show would do fine business in the summer before seeing steep losses in the fall and be gone by the end of the year. “The producers of King Kong, another multimillion-dollar spectacle, already have their eye on the Foxwoods Theatre.”