“The new Spider-Man is all for fun, a live-on-stage comic book, pure and simple – precisely what the last version wasn’t, and what its team, on hiatus for several weeks of rewrites and rehearsals, reimagined. It will by no means assume a spot in the pantheon of great Broadway musicals, but it’s now far more than a tortured curiosity.”
Tag: 06.15.11
Pittsburgh Symphony Musicians Take Pay Cut, Ratify New Contract
“The contract, ratified Saturday night, calls for a 9.7 percent across-the-board cut in musicians’ salary in its first year — one of the biggest wage reductions in the orchestra’s history. Annual base salary will be $100,110, down from $110,764 this season, but musicians paid above scale will give back more. Wages will be frozen the second year of the contract.”
“Spider-Man”: A Survey Of Bad Reviews
“After a record 183 preview performances, technical problems that resulted in injuries to a couple of actors, the firing of director Julie Taymor and a major reworking of the script, the troubled musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark debuted officially on Monday night at New York City’s Foxwoods Theatre.”
Salman Rushdie Says TV Is Where The Action Is (And Smart Writing)
“Sir Salman, whose accolades include the “Booker of Bookers” award, has switched his attentions from literary fiction to the small screen, currently working on a new science fiction series in America.”
Change: There Will Be Variable Number Of Oscar “Best Picture” Nominees
“The Academy said the change came after analyzing the voting from the last two years. In 2009, the Oscars expanded the best picture field from five nominees to 10.”
What If You Popped Up Some Arts Journalism?
“This team of roughly 40 arts journalists, working with USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and ensconced in a second-floor office suite at Engine Co. No. 28, a converted firehouse-turned-restaurant on South Figueroa, won’t be battling blazes. They’ll be reporting on one of the largest concentrations of live theater ever to occur in Southern California.”
Spider-Man – Beauty Is Only Skin Deep (Or Something Like That)
“Whatever Ms. Taymor may have had in mind, the end product does no more than aspire to being the live-action counterpart of such big-budget comic-book films as Tim Burton’s “Batman” and Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy.” The problem is that no stage show, even a multimillion-dollar extravaganza, can offer anything remotely as believable-looking as the digitally generated magic.”
“Spider-Man” Glides Through Its Opening
After months of setting theater records, like a $70 million budget and 183 preview performances (compared with the usual 30), “Spider-Man” unfolded flawlessly before a buoyant celebrity audience that included former President Bill Clinton sitting in Row N beside his old friend Bono, of U2, the show’s composer with his band mate the Edge.
Where NY City Opera Went Wrong
“A review of the opera’s financial records reveals yawning, longstanding gaps between its income and its expenses. Though the company has been critically acclaimed, internal documents show its performances now run less than half full on average, and its net assets have plummeted by more than 80 percent in the past seven years to $9.6 million.”
My Spidey Senses Are Broken
“Given the limited amount of fix-‘er-up time, and the depths of incoherence from which this show had to rise, 2.0 is a remarkable achievement for those who have toiled for coherence and a measure of absolution in this dangerously tangled web.”