Spider-Man The Musical Sneak Preview on GMA – UPDATED

by Marc Alan Fishman on September 10th, 2010 at 2:31 am
Posted In: News

Spidey-Fans, make sure you’re up Friday morning for a chance to sneak a peek at the upcoming Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Good Morning America. The musical, which is rumored to be one of the priciest to swing into the Foxwoods Theatre, opens November 15. Lucky for all us musical theater geeks, director Julie Taymor and Spidey himself, Reeve Carney, will bring a solo song to GMA via a performance at the Hudson Theater, with fans invited to come down for the free show. We television viewers will enjoy a post-performance interview with the director and the authors of the music and lyrics, Bono and The Edge. Word has it that aside from this musical, both men dabble in rock and roll in a quartet by the name of U2.

While most comic fans are skeptical of their favorite web-spinning hero spinning songs and soliloquies on the Broadway stage, stranger things have become a success. Lest we forget, the Evil Dead Musical was damn good. So, before we light our torches, let’s give the ol’ webhead a chance to sing his spandex off.

UPDATE: So, we watched the telecast, action figure firmly placed in our palms, ready to watch our hero make his way to the stage. Would it be webtastic or a kill a little bit of our soul, like One More Day? Let’s let some pasty white people wax poetic first:

A “pop-up book” set? Those costumes? The Swiss Miss? Is this some kind of cruel joke? Is Norman Osbourne financing this play in hopes of murdering the wall-crawler on the stage? Our high hopes haven’t been crushed this hard since the dance sequence of Spider-Man 3: Attack of Emo Parker. And to put the final nail in the coffin? How about a song from the show:

Let’s be honest here. The song is actually catchy. And because it’s being performed with a rock band, with absolutely no context to the final play, we’ve no idea how terrible this will be once it’s sewn into the “pop-up book” scenery and gaudy costumes. Kudos to Bono and The Edge for writing a catchy rock song (a feat that shouldn’t be that hard, given their 20+ years doing it), but frankly we’re scared for the final product. A lanky rock singer running around in a body sock, whilst a cast of dancing, prancing chorusmen flail about over a rock-and-roll score? Someone give us a copy of the “Death of Gwen Stacy” so we can recall the last time Spider-Man was worth our fanfare.