Sister Emma’s Confessions: He’s a Music (Spider-)Man

Welcome brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins and cousines (that’s French for lady cousins) to this week’s confession.  Just over a month later, I’ll assume the majority of you lot have seen Marc Webb’s hipster love story The Amazing Spider-Man and formulated opinions of it.  But did you know that in addition to being adapted, produced and then re-booted in film format that everyone’s favorite friendly, neighborhood boy in spandex has also starred in not one but two musicals?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB8toirijrg

If you’re a Spider-Man fan, you’ve probably militantly resisted the Broadway extravaganza Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.  Despite the fact that this over-produced monstrosity violated numerous safety codes and resulted in several performers suffering serious head trauma and prolonged hospital stays, 75 million dollars and a new director later, it is actually still running at the Foxwoods Theatre.  So, if you happen to be in the greater New York City area, you can still shell out a hundred bucks to go marvel at the acrobatics — but exit stage left, wondering why Peter couldn’t stop having hallucinations involving that weird spider goddess.

You know, the one from his book report at the beginning of the play.

For significantly less dollars you could have, at one point (and currently, on the internet), in multiple cities (those being New York, Los Angeles, and Lincoln, Nebraska, of all places) seen a much more cohesive, though admittedly less visually stimulating Spider-Man musical.  This show, The Spidey Project is in no way affiliated with Marvel, and was finagled together by some Spidey fans in New York who were irked by the very existence of the Broadway show, not to mention the numerous delays.

Obviously, the “lots of dollars” attitude doesn’t grant the right to great art; so, thankfully, with the help of others who shared the likely sentiment for the Webcrawler, Justin Moran and Jon Roufaeal went on to successfully produce this charming little musical for no money – and opened, as promised, on March 14^th 2011 – the day before Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark was supposed to open.

Yeah, supposed to.

It didn’t actually open until that June.

Though the plotline is certainly more cohesive in The Spidey Project since, well, without all the flash and flare of a 75 million dollar production.. you actually have to tell a story that makes sense both in terms of plot and tone.  Spidey is pure comedy  Even the moments following Uncle Ben’s oft-portrayed demise are hilarious.  And, for whatever reason, Flash Thompson is obsessed with Chipotle.

Which is admittedly delicious, so who isn’t really?

While one could argue Spider-Man: Turn of the Dark is a far more dramatic piece of musical theatre — and there certainly are some schmaltzy pseudo-rock ballads — to this particularly Sister, it only reeks of an ill-executed attempt at mixed musical genres.  The songs are not quite rock, not quite musical theatre, not quite opera and not quite worth remembering long enough to hum after exiting the theatre.

And for whatever reason, despite the overall weighty tone of the production, Green Goblin’s big song and dance is strangely reminiscent of every season finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race…