Depite the fact that the troubled Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark managed to get thru a whole week without maiming or injuring any of its players, The New Yorker magazine decided to poke a little fun at the show with the cover of this week’s issue. Despite the calamities, tho, there is some [...]
Depite the fact that the troubled Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark managed to get thru a whole week without maiming or injuring any of its players, The New Yorker magazine decided to poke a little fun at the show with the cover of this week’s issue. Despite the calamities, tho, there is some good news for Turn Off the Dark. The show managed to out-gross Wicked to become the current most successful show on Broadway!
New Yorkers excel at Schadenfreude. They love to watch people fall, whether in public life (Eliot Spitzer, Jeff Zucker) or on a snowy patch of sidewalk. When hubris or large sums of money are involved, all the better. In the case of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”—at sixty-five million dollars, the most expensive Broadway musical ever staged—those elements have been compounded by death-defying aerial stunts, which, despite safety tuneups by the director, Julie Taymor, have resulted in a stream of ghastly headlines … Through all [the accidents and injuries], ticket sales have soared, which raises an uncomfortable question: are people paying to see calamity? At a preview last Tuesday, members of the audience seemed conflicted. Outside the theatre, Alaina Schwartz, aged twelve, who had come from Long Island with her family, was asked if she hoped to see someone fall. “Yes! Yes!” she said. “I’m weird about that stuff. Like, there was a roller coaster and it kind of fell backwards, and I was kind of wishing that I was on that roller coaster at the time that it fell.” Her father, Steven, looked concerned. “I hope somebody falls but they’re O.K.,” her sister Alexa, fourteen, said. A third sister, Stephanie, nine, objected: “If something goes wrong, that’s bad luck for us!” In the lobby, Allie Bauer, a Yale junior, said, “There’s a certain allure to this being a very dangerous performance.” “You’re more evil than I am,” her classmate Will Moritz said, eating a Twizzler. After thinking it over, he added, “If I could see someone fall from the rafters but not go to the hospital—just magically get up—then I’d be down.” (He’s majoring in psychology.)
OY! It is kinda sick to think that people are flocking to the show in the hopes that they will see someone get hurt but, I guess that’s entertainment here in America … entertainment that is working. As I mentioned above, Turn Off the Dark for the first time has sold more tickets than Wicked (the previous #1 show on Broadway) which means that all the “bad press” that the show has been getting is actually helping ticket sales:
For the first time, “Spider-Man” has knocked “Wicked” from its usual perch as the highest-grossing show on Broadway, claiming the top spot for itself last week. “Spider-Man” beat “Wicked” by just $58, with the teen-superhero musical grossing $1,588,514 while the revisionist Oz musical grossed $1,588,456. “Wicked,” though, had 100 percent of its audience paying for tickets (with an average paid admission of $109.76) while “Spider-Man” was offering some discount and free tickets during its preview period; its average paid admission was $102.86. Still, “Spider-Man” … played to full houses last week, as did “Wicked.” The Foxwoods Theater, Spidey’s home, has 1,930 seats to sell, while the Gershwin Theater, home of “Wicked,” has 1,809 to sell … could “Spider-Man” give “Wicked” a run for its money in the months and years to come?
Without question, people are going to the show for the spectacle … but if the show isn’t good, it won’t stand a chance of besting Wicked in the long run. Wicked is one of my all-time fave musicals, it would take A LOT for a new show to eclipse my love for the untold story of the witches of OZ. That said, I’m just as curious as anyone to see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and I am planning to see it for myself next month. Congrats are deffo in order for Spider-Man‘s ability to knock Wicked out of the top spot … tho, it remains to be seen if it can stay on top.
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