Thursday, June 16, 2011

"Spider-Man": lessons learned from disastrous previews

As part of the pre-relaunch hype for the musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," composers Bono and the Edge discussed with the New York Times some of what they'd learned from the initial, disastrous previews:

Bono said they had “some of the best days of our lives daydreaming about what you could do on a stage” with [director Julie] Taymor and their fourth collaborator, the playwright Glen Berger.

But they had no idea how much time it would consume.

“The hours and weeks and months,” Bono said with a distinct melancholy flattening his voice, in an otherwise empty private room at the Spotted Pig restaurant in the West Village, in which he is an investor. “If we thought it would take this long, there is not a chance on earth we’d have done it.”...

In hindsight, Bono said, starting preview performances of “Spider-Man” on Broadway in November without an out-of-town tryout was “a terrible decision” that put enormous pressure on Ms. Taymor. But such a test run was impossible, Bono added, because the show’s aerial technology and massive, pop-up sets were built to fit its New York home, the Foxwoods Theater.

“Looking back,” Bono said, “we, through inexperience, had no sense of the implications of that decision. That the first time anyone saw a full run-through of the story, songs, staging, and show was the first night of previews. Can you imagine that? No one had seen the whole thing before everyone saw it.”

There are lots of lessons to be learned from a disaster like "Spider-Man." It's good to know that some of the principals are already thinking about them. What do you think?

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