![]() In the months that followed the first preview, the official opening was repeatedly postponed while Berger and his colleagues dealt with bruising, embargo-defying reviews, sackings, injuries, and countless technical snags.īy May 2011, Turn Off the Dark had become so synonymous with theatrical disaster that a headline in The Onion, the satirical newspaper, appeared to be only slightly exaggerating: “Nuclear Bomb Detonates During Rehearsal for ‘Spider-Man’ Musical”. And the financial crisis of 20 had scared off private investors, so that in August 2009, the production found itself $20 million short of cash. Its initial lead producer and guiding light, Tony Adams, had had a fatal stroke in 2005 while in a meeting with The Edge. Before the first preview, Turn Off the Dark was already being gossiped about as a ‘troubled’ enterprise. We’ll keep improving it and improving it, and it’s going to be duck soup by the time we open in January.” But we knew by the end of the night, well, that’s the worst it’s ever going to be. One of the crew members fetched a stick to prod him with, but that didn’t help. It was the worst possible position because no one could reach him. And for some reason he stopped, so you had Spider-Man dangling seven feet above the first two rows. “Then there was a flourish,” says Berger, “when Spider-Man flies off through the audience towards the balcony. But everything was going relatively smoothly until the last seconds before the interval. ![]()
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