Broadway's most expensive show beset
19, 2010, a group of Broadway ticketing agents gathered at the Foxwoods Theatre for a sneak peek at some of the flying stunts in the upcoming White Satin Milady 100mm Broadway musical "Spider Man, Turn Off the Dark."
Kevin Aubin, a dancer, performed what was called the "Big Jump," leaping from the back of the theater, somersaulting through the air and landing, on all fours, on the lip of the stage.
"Four sales agents sitting in the front row shrieked in fear and delight," Glen Berger, who co wrote the musical, notes in his new book, "Song of Spider Man."
Firefighters attend to an injured actor during an August performance of Turn Off the Dark. then Berger noticed a grimace flicker across Aubin's face. The dancer scuttled off stage and the presentation continued. The agents seemed delighted by the flying effects. Not one of them guessed that "Kevin Aubin broke both of his wrists right in front of them," Berger writes.
Berger panicked. What if the incident got leaked? "Spider Man," the most expensive Broadway musical ever, was already under assault in the press for financial mismanagement, production delays and its ballooning budget. But nothing about Aubin, who was now wearing casts up to his elbows, appeared in the papers.
"Looked like the coast was clear," Berger writes. "I didn't even want to contemplate the sort of hay Riedel would have made out of this."
If I was a little slow off the mark, it was because I happened to be on vacation the week Aubin cracked his wrists. But when I returned, I phoned a source on the show.
"I almost hesitate to tell you this, but the other week, a kid got seriously injured," the source said. "Be careful how you handle it."
The next day, Berger read in The Post, " 'Spider Man' Safety Scare: Actor breaks both wrists in failed stunt."
"This was the day it started. The day the heat lamps got turned on," Berger writes. "The Foxwoods was going to become a fishbowl. Containing a bunch of increasingly stressed out fish."
"Song of Spider Man" (Simon Schuster) is an entertaining tell all about this infamous musical that, Rose Patent Leather Milady 100mm in the fall of 2010, made headlines almost every day.
Supporting players include yours truly, or, as Berger calls me in his book, "a parasite carrying blood sucking mosquito depositing the larvae of an elephantiasis causing filarial worm under the skin of our Black Lace Milady 100mm show."
The saga of "Spider Man" begins as all Broadway shows do with a sense of excitement and promise fueling the creative team. The four creators met at Bono's villa in the South of France to outline the show.
It became clear, however, that Jordan and Taymor were no Kaufman and Hart. She thought his early drafts were too cinematic; he thought her ideas, such as a complex subplot involving a mythological character called Arachne, were pretentious. He sent her a "treatise" on comic books, mythology and Taymor's career. "It read like I was on drugs," he writes.
But it got him an interview. And Taymor liked him. A lot. The day after he submitted a sample scene, Taymor called to say he had the job.
At the time, Berger was writing scripts for PBS, barely able to make his mortgage payments. Suddenly, he was being whisked off in an SUV to meet Bono and The Edge after a U2 concert in the Meadowlands.
"This has to be brilliant," Bono told him. "Do you understand? It has to be."
A prominent theater lawyer said to him: "You're Nude Patent Leather Milady 100mm about to jump into some seriously deep water. You have no idea the amount of money and expectation riding on this project . . . But I'm going to give you some advice. Whatever you do, whatever happens, stick with Julie."
It was easy, at first. Taymor was brilliant, beautiful, seductive. They brainstormed at her country house. She "excited the particles in the air how else to put it cast the spell. Where had this woman been all my life?"
Bono and The Edge didn't cast quite such a spell. They weren't around much because they were on tour. They sent in songs from the road, but slowly. Deadlines loomed; the score remained incomplete.
But Taymor and Berger thought what they submitted was "f inspired."
"Spider Man" was not going to be your grandmother's show. It was going to be a rock musical or, as Taymor called it, "a circus rock and roll drama."
It was also going to be expensive. Unbeknownst to its creators, the money wasn't there. The original producer, a wonderful man named Tony Adams, dropped dead of a brain hemorrhage in The Edge's Soho apartment while signing the contracts for the show. David Garfinkle, Adams' lawyer, took over.