When Spider Man Fell

It was an eventful Monday night, as I was in the audience of Spider Man when one of the stunt men was injured. I had bought tickets for the show a while ago, thinking it would be a great birthday present for my Dad, who loves theater. I chose Dec. 20 when the opening night was scheduled for Dec. 21, thinking the show would be "frozen" by then. Silly me.

The first act was technically seamless -- there's a great deal of complex aerial work that occurs above the orchestra audience (we sat in Row M, Center, so at the thick of the action). The stunts are impressive and really did go off without a hitch. The accident occurred about an hour into the second act -- and what couldn't be far from the end of the show. It's during the iconic sequence when Mary Jane hangs beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. There's a giant set piece of the bridge, the actress dangling on a tether below, and then a giant cardboard cut of the Green Goblin appears and cuts the tether (if calling it cardboard sounds like a cheap shot, it is, the show has a frustrating lack of a unified aesthetic vision, and for the $65 million budget, the seams really do show).

When the Goblin has cut the rope, she descends artfully and theatrically into the pit below. Spider Man, on top of the bridge, looking helpless, is meant to artfully and theatrically descend after her. Well, that's not what happened. He dove in after her, and fell. Like, really fell. Quickly and without control. His cable swung in the air after him, and was connected to him but seemingly not connected to anything else. It looked to me that it may have snapped, and even seemed to swing out into the audience.

It was immediately clear something was wrong. Initially, I had thought that someone in the front rows may have been hit by the swinging tether. But then a scream and muffled sobs from in the pit -- presumably from the actress who plays Mary Jane -- and a shout from down below to call 911 made it clear that an actor had been hurt. Shortly thereafter a voice came over the PA and said they would be taking a "momentary break" (duh) and then less than a minute later the current came down, the lights went up, and they announced that they would be "ending the show for the night". As we walked down the street, we saw the ambulance pull in on the street behind the theater so our thoughts that someone may have been seriously injured were seemingly confirmed.

So that's that. After word got on that I saw the whole thing, a friend-of-a-friend who works for NY1 did a quick phone interview that aired live that night (I've also got a blurb on the online piece), so I've had about two-and-a-half minutes of fame and have added "Spider Man Audience Member" to my CV.

The eeriest thing about it -- and yes, it's eerie to witness someone get injured in a spectacle -- is that I had joked all week about possible catastrophe at the performance. Given the heaps of bad buzz the show had amassed, I really wasn't expecting much. I thought the best bet would be to look forward to a Carrie-esque debacle. So I was really hoping for something that would implode, shutter early, and become the stuff of theater legend. Like with most things in my life, I was in search of a killer anecdote, something that could become endless fodder at dinner parties for years. And, really, that's just what I got.

That said, I think the responsible thing to do is either to close down the show or cut back on the elaborate spectacle. It's reckless to continue at this pace given the amount of cast injuries. And, trust me, this is not a show worth dying for. With it's split-personalities, forgettable rock anthems, and histrionic choreography, it's the theatrical equivalent of Exxon Valdez. As I watched (often with slack-jawed befuddlement that the entire spectacle was actually happening), I came up with the following alternate titles:

1. Barbarella On Ice

There's an odd number in a lab (where Peter Parker will, as we all know, be bitten by a radioactive bug), that has a chorus of scientists clad in silver jumpsuits doing something that looks like the macarena. It's stilted at best, something one would expect from a marriage of Jane Fonda's sci-fi classic and the Ice Capades.

2. The Battle of Reeve Carney's Bulge

It took me a while to realize that Carney (who headlines the show as Peter Parker) wasn't doing his own stunts as Spider Man. Lucky him, as the show's one faulty tether short of a dead aerialist. I came to this realization because, well, the skin-tight Spidey suits leave precious little to the imagination. Let's just say the pole-thin Carney doesn't hold up to his stuntmen counterparts.

3. Spaceballs: A Melodrama

There's a very odd moment near the end of the second act when the Green Goblin (resembling the beleaguered hero from Return of Swamp Thing) hams it up in a broadly comic cabaret number. It reminded me, naturally, of the sequence in Spaceballs that spoofs Alien. The critter leaps from the poor guy's stomach with a top hat on, ready to bilk his moment in the spotlight. In a show that really does put everyone's life on the line -- characters, audience members, aerialists -- it's a jarring tonal shift.