By Chantel Delulio
Lifestyle Editor
The human element. It’s not just a vague marketing strategy from those Dow Chemical Company commercials where they never really explain what they do. It’s also the key to putting on a musical adaptation of a beloved superhero. Just as the people behind “The Spidey Project.”
By now, even people who care nothing for comic books or musical theatre have heard all about the 70 million dollar shaped mess that is “Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark.” Since it opened for previews last fall, the musical (with music by Bono and The Edge of U2 fame) has been plagued with malfunctioning equipment, injured actors, and (most recently) the quitting of director Julie Taymor.
Not to mention the fact that the script and the music itself are, almost universally agreed upon, decidedly mediocre.
Enter “The Spidey Project.”
Back in February, humorist and playwright Justin Moran launched what he dubbed the “Spiderman Smackdown.” The challenge: to write, compose, cast, rehearse and perform a Spiderman musical to premiere one day before “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” with just a month of preparation and a budget of zero dollars.
The result? Well, as of March 14, “The Spidey Project” had its premiere to overwhelmingly positive reviews. “Turn Off the Dark,” however, has since announced that all shows between April 19th and May 11th have been cancelled to rehearse its changes (which include cutting an entire character) before resuming previews on May 12th.
“The Spidey Project” (which is available to view online at thespideyproject.blogspot.com) set out to prove a very simple truth with a not so simple task. Any musical, not just one about Spiderman, doesn’t succeed because you throw lots of money and convoluted staging at a project. Like any medium of storytelling, everything still comes back to the character and the humanity at the center of it all.
Although this is doubly true in the case of a character like Spider-Man/Peter Parker. Though he has powers he’s not all powerful like Superman. He’s not a god or a product of gods like Thor or Wonder Woman. He doesn’t have billions of dollars to back him up like Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark. He’s just a nerdy kid from Queens trying to practice some photography in between his crime fighting sessions.
Spider-Man has always been one of the more lighthearted superheroes, famous for his wisecracking as much as for combating ne’er do wells. And the overwrought set design, stunts, and over the top music of Bono could never be in the spirit of Spider-Man. The character is, after all, a cartoon. Any production that treats him with such melodrama is assured to miss the point.
“The Spidey Project” isn’t exactly “Les Misérables” but it’s also not supposed to be. The story is basic, if a little thin, but for an hour-long musical conceived in 30 days with no budget, it’s still impressive. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s an entertaining show. The songs, which include an ode to Chipotle, are catchy. The actors are not only good musical theatre actors, but adept comedians as well. And Spiderman even gets to partake in some charming, low budget web-slinging (without posing any risk to the health of actor or audience members).
At the end of the day it proves that there’s something to be said for passion and ingenuity over big names and big money.
A non-superhero musical (as long as you don’t count baseball-playing skills bestowed on you by Satan as being superhuman) said it best: “You’ve gotta’ have heart. All you really need is heart.”
March 25, 2011
Volume LXXXI Issue 19