In case anyone’s been wondering: I won’t be reviewing Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark until Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark opens. And when will that be? Producers now say February 7 is their drop-dead (though, understandably, they’re not using that particular phrase). But conspiracy theorists whisper never: The producers will keep stalling indefinitely, putting off Judgment Day again and again while gorging themselves on full-priced $200-plus tickets and a built-in audience supply line comprised of families, comic-book fanatics, and the expanding snuff-theater niche. Taken at its word by a credulous media Establishment, this criminally exigent Upton Sinclair rendering tank of a musical (the argument goes) will continue grinding the bones of its Stockholm Syndrome’d actors to make its bread and soaking up hard-earned tourist dollars better spent on a fifth trip to Mamma Mia! … until it’s stopped by a SuperBestFriends-esque corps of heroic critics, willing to shuck off hidebound protocol and call-’em-like-they-seez-’em. And, in fact, a couple of critics (not to mention scads of quasi-critics) have already overleapt the imaginary wall separating preview performances (traditionally forbidden to critics because the show is still evolving) from press nights (when the show is officially considered frozen).
Me, I can’t say I find this consumer-protection argument very compelling — not yet, at least. Sure, Spider-Man is trading heavily on its built-in brand recognition and making a buck any way it can — that’s natural enough, considering it’s a private enterprise. The show is charging full price for a work-in-progress, and one could argue that it’s selling substandard goods to a public largely uneducated about the difference between a preview performance and the final product. But that particular issue has been covered pretty thoroughly by theater reporters, who’ve made quite the feast of this show. If there’s a ticket buyer alive who doesn’t know something of Spidey’s woes, I’d like to meet him and rent the rock he lives under for weekly sensory-deprivation sessions. Patrick Healy and Michael Riedel have made the non-comatose public painfully aware of what they might or might not expect to get for their money, and more power to ‘em: They’re reporters. That’s their job. (Laying out all the scandal and mayhem in vivid detail, they’re basically serving as Spidey’s streem-team — they’ve probably sold more tickets than those dementia-inducing commercials.) But critics, I think, needn’t weigh in on matters of economic justice. (They’ve got enough on their plates Googling synonyms for “boring†and “silly†and “mise en scene.â€)
Look, I’m not defending Spidey, per se. Hell, I’ve enjoyed the nonstop web-tweaking from Conan and Colbert so much, I kinda don’t want it to end. But the fact is, the creators of Spider-Man, whatever their other sins may or may not be, appear to be using this elongated preview period the way God intended: to make changes in their show, and test them in front of a live audience. (I’m leaving aside the show’s woeful safety record because I feel that’s an entirely separate issue, which shouldn’t be conflated with to-pre-review-or-not-to-pre-review.) That these “changes†amount to a full-scale finishing-the-hat — that the show appears not to have been fully conceived when it entered previews — is none of my business. I’d like my review to stand, when I finally get to write it. So I’ll see the show when it’s finished, and not a moment before.
But is the nightmare scenario — an infinitely, cynically delayed opening night — a real possibility? I suppose. Shows have tried it in the past, with mixed results. My colleague John Simon recalls the 1979 musical Sarava, which ran reduced-price previews for six months before critics revolted, unleashed a torrent of unauthorized pans, and euthanized the show. On a much tinier scale, the Culture Project seemed to be attempting a similar maneuver last fall when it indefinitely delayed the opening of Imagining Heschel, a mystifyingly under-rehearsed two-hander starring a very confused-looking Richard Dreyfuss. (The windfall: four whopping weeks of critic-free, half-memorized mumbling at the Cherry Lane. Bravissimo! I’m sure the ill-gotten grosses were lavish enough to cover an orgiastic cast party at Taco Bell.)
Now maybe I’m overanalyzing this, but the question of whether or not to review Spider-Man feels like it’s shaping up into some massive generational clash, a debate pitting ossified old-media pieties against the always-salubrious effects of total transparency. Why respect the boundaries set by a big-money Broadway megalith? Isn’t that like letting Lehman Bros. regulate itself? Everything’s built in full view of the public these days — the iPhone leaked, and so should Spidey. Why should any commercial art form be spared the fate of music, movies, TV? Abominations grow in the dark, and demand a thorough Assange-ing, isn’t that the way? Well, ultimately, yes. But I just don’t think we’re in a Pentagon Papers kinda situation with Spider-Man right now. If there’s yet another delay, the question is worth revisiting. For now, I can honestly say I’m not breaking down the Foxwoods Theater’s door. I can wait patiently — spiderlike. (Hell, I can wait forever, long as I have this, perhaps the definitive Spidey adaptation.)
But maybe you disagree? Oh, I sure hope you do. Makes things a lot more interesting around here, let me tell you. (We haven’t had any concussions or 30-foot falls around here since the last round of budget cuts.)