Disaster

Spider-Man Musical Opens With Bugs

First preview beset by technical problems.

The producers of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, the most expensive musical in Broadway history, have been working to lower expectations for the musical’s preview run, and for good reason. After a two-week delay, the show had to go on Sunday night, and the opening performance was riddled with show-stopping technical problems. Set pieces were missing, many of the show’s already-legendary special effects were absent, and multiple actors were left dangling above the audience for awkward amounts of time. (At one point, the stage manager took to the loud speaker to congratulate a dangling actress.) Some audience members found the script confusing, and one acting school administrator told The New York Times he thought the U2-composed musical’s problems were too fundamental to be worked out in previews. The performance dragged on for 3.5 hours.