Spiderman snares $1m ticket sales despite disastrous first preview

Reeve Carney who plays Peter Parker/Spiderman

Producers of the new U2 Spiderman musical on Broadway say they sold $1 million worth of tickets to the show, within 24 hours of its first preview on Sunday night. That’s despite a series of major technical problems which caused the first performance to be halted five times.  Audience members reported that, at one point, the actor playing Spiderman was left dangling from wires ten feet over the heads of the audience due to a glitch with the spectacular aerial stunts.

One critic, Michael Riedel of the New York Post, branded Sunday’s preview “an epic flop” and claimed the $65m production had “a dull score and a baffling script”. But the negative reports have not hurt public interest in the musical, which officially opens on January 11^th. As previews resumed on Broadway last night, lead producer Michael Cohl announced that audiences have given the show a one million dollar vote of confidence. “We’re thrilled to finally be performing this terrific show for audiences,” said Cohl, “and we’re excited that audiences are coming in droves.”

Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark is the most expensive show ever staged on Broadway. Its lyrics and music were written by Bono and the Edge, and it’s directed by Julie Taymor, the talent behind the smash hit The Lion King. The long-delayed production has been kept under wraps until recent weeks, but now that it’s been performed for the first time in front of audiences, a major marketing effort has swung into action. Behind-the-scenes footage of Bono and the Edge composing songs for the show were screened across the US as part of a CBS 60 Minutes special on Sunday night. And 30-second TV advertising spots have been aired regularly since the first show. The musical also has a partnership deal with SyFy, a cable television channel specialising in science fiction and fantasy programming, in the hope that the musical can attract an audience not traditionally associated with Broadway.

Official reviews of the new shows are not published until after the official opening, but such is the level of interest in Spiderman, the internet has been abuzz with comment since Sunday night’s first show. The general consensus is that while there are major issues to be ironed out, the staging is spectacular and it has the potential to be a crowd-pleasing smash. But worryingly many of Sunday’s audience also had complaints over plot cohesion and some described the music as “hit and miss”. The production needs a long successful run in order to recoup the massive investment and prevent going down in history as the most expensive flop ever on Broadway.