As if the problems with a departing director and a new creative team weren't enough for Spider-Man: Legends of the Fall Turn Off the Dark, last night's performance included one of the show's patented technical hiccups when the Green Goblin got stuck in midair, causing the show to stop for five minutes at the end of the first act. Our spy on the scene gave us the full report:
Green Goblin flew (harnessed, but he had these very cool hang-glidey wings) for about five seconds before they circled him back onto stage. Without bringing up the house lights someone came on the PA and said "We're having some difficulties with Green Goblin's steering mechanism" and (paraphrasing now) "Stay with us for a few minutes while we get it fixed." House was dark the whole time while they spent about five minutes fiddling around with things offstage. Meanwhile, Goblin was chilling on stage making funny hand gestures at the audience (he was wearing a big mask, so no facial expressions)—lots of exaggerated shrugs, thumbs up, etc. One of the many Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?) was on a platform at the edge of the first balcony (ironically named the Flying Circle!) waiting for what I guess was going to be a mid-air interactive battle, but he was just chillin, doing little dances, making funny gestures. The actors seemed sort of resigned but very professional.
Then the PA guy came back on and said something like "For safety reasons, we're going to fast-forward to the end of this flying sequence and re-set the harnesses for the next flying sequence. Thanks for your patience." And then Goblin jumped offstage and the kind of Greek chorus of the show (some teenagers who are writing the comic book whose story we're seeing) came on and ad-libbed something like "So Green Goblin's totally defeated!" or similar.
Audience was pretty patient with it. Lots of laughs, and big applause when the show got going again.
As you can imagine, there were quite a few tweets about the mishap.
And in other Spidey news, because (like Charlie Sheen) there always seems to be more of this mess, the Post's Michael Riedel reports in an entertaining take on the just announced creative switcheroo that the real force going ahead won't be the new guys but instead will be no less than Bono. "At this point, he's the only person on the show who has any credibility left," a source told Riedel. Has his source heard the music from this show?
