Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History (38 page)

And yet,
before I could feel disheartened, I would run into actors feeling like they had a new lease on life. Backstage, Patrick Page made sure to let me know how wholeheartedly he supported where the new script was going.

“Julie kept insisting things were getting clearer and clearer in the old script. But I wanted to tell her, ‘Julie, maybe they’re getting
clearer,
but that doesn’t mean anyone in the audience
cares
.’ ”

He was right. Very few cared about Arachne. The problem was probably fixable at one point, but . . . well, not anymore.

•     •     •

“What is happening to this show???”

It was the first communication I had received from Julie Taymor in over a month. The e-mail had only one other sentence: “The reports I am getting are mind-boggling.”

I vented to her. Because by April 6—just eleven days before we shut down for three weeks of Tech—the seams were coming undone. Phil’s wish list was growing by the day. He just wanted a more lucid and approachable show. Nevertheless, the growing number of staff grumbling about both his approach and his solutions was reaching critical mass. The associate lighting designer was writing to Don Holder that Phil was fixing things that weren’t broken and “breaking things that are fixed.” Don Holder admitted he hadn’t returned Phil’s most recent call “as I worry that I may say something (or several things) I’ll regret later.” Rob Bissinger, meanwhile, was warning George Tsypin that if no one put the brakes on Phil’s new vision for the show “it will only get worse.” If the design team’s attention continued to be diverted to the items on Phil’s ever-growing list, it could scuttle the whole schedule. Finally, Michael Cohl told Phil he had forty-eight hours to cut his wish list in half.

Although many people were characterizing the changes Phil sought—from the costumes, to the set, to the script—as ones that would make the show “a theme-park entertainment,” there were those who didn’t see a problem with that. Upon reading the new script, Marvel representatives were telling Phil “you’ve given us the show we’ve always wanted.”

Bono and Edge, however, were calling from Buenos Aires with a different opinion. With their encouragement, I lobbied Phil for some alone time with the script to “massage” some of Roberto’s material. But the request went nowhere. After all, wasn’t I the guy who wrote 1.0? He didn’t seem to remember me sitting across from him at his own interview. Well, I figured, I could always tell Roberto what I thought of some of the writing. After all, he said he had no ego involved, and that he welcomed a frank exchange of opinions and ideas. So I told him what I thought. It didn’t go so well.

Note from Glen to Roberto: “Hey man, just wanted to apologize again for any insensitivity on my part on the phone.”

Note from Roberto to Glen: “I know you weren’t doing ANYTHING intentional, Glen. As Stan Lee would say,
‘ ’Nuff said
.
’  
”

Stan Lee had a “Stan’s Soapbox” column in the issues of Marvel Comics that he edited. In the column, he’d often end a sincere or lofty thought with “ ’Nuff said.” I’d take any of those clichés—“It’s water under the bridge”; “We’re cool”; “It’s all good”—anything to get past the grudge bearing and
move on
.

I’m going to strive to do better.

•     •     •

In the rehearsal notes sent out on April 14, I noticed a request for the costume department to generate T-shirts with the phrase
GOBLIN’S GODDESSES
printed on them. Apparently it was for the new number at the top of Act Two.

“ ‘Goblin’s Goddesses’? What the hell is
that
?” I asked Roberto. He didn’t know either, but wondered: “Is that a Charlie Sheen reference?”

Oh God. It’s probably a Charlie Sheen reference.

That month, the actor Charlie Sheen was reaching the climax of
his career implosion. He had become a wild-eyed, self-destructive media magnet, which was probably why articles had been referring to
Turn Off the Dark
of late as “The Charlie Sheen of Theatre.”

With a bit of research, I found out that Charlie Sheen called the ladies in his life “his goddesses.” Stage manager Randall joked to Phil during rehearsal the day before that the female dancers in “A Freak Like Me” should be called “Goblin’s Goddesses.” It was meant as a joke, but Phil liked the idea, and by the end of the day, new costumes were being ordered.

Most everyone on the original creative team shared Julie Taymor’s nausea for disposable pop culture. For years, it wasn’t unusual in a
Turn Off the Dark
meeting to hear a reference to composer Krzysztof Penderecki, or “grotesques” in ancient Japanese
setsuwa
tales. And now? A costume referencing the extracurricular activities of a
sitcom
star was going to be in the show. Phil’s response, of course, would be that using a Polish composer known for such works as
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima
as a reference point pretty much summed up what went wrong in
Turn Off the Dark
1.0. Point taken. But
Charlie Sheen
?

“It’ll date itself inside a month!” I squeaked to Roberto. I had reached number sixteen on my list of why the idea was a bad one.

“So you want
me
to deal with it?” Roberto asked.

Yes please
.

So Roberto casually noted to Phil that his wardrobe request was for Act Two, scene
one,
but the Goblin wasn’t actually
named
“the Green Goblin” until Act Two, scene
four
. Therefore, T-shirts saying
GOBLIN’S GODDESSES
wouldn’t really make much sense.

“Shit. You’re right,” Phil said.

Nicely played, Roberto.

•     •     •

“Have you fixed our show yet?”

“Not yet!”

“Well,” said Kat Purvis one day, “it won’t be fixed until ‘Think Again’ is back in.”

“You think so too, huh?”

I urged Kat to work on Phil.
Be subtle, but persistent
. I tracked down others who felt similarly about “Think Again” and asked them to do all the lobbying for the song they could muster. This was two weeks previous, and now the little campaign was bearing fruit. Phil announced that “Think Again” was back in the show.

I ran to find T. V. Carpio as soon as I heard the news—she had a song back! One that showcased a whole other side of her character! She could be more than just the “Gentle Lady Spirit Guide”! But she didn’t seem happy.

“What’s Arachne’s point now?” she sighed. “Why even keep her in the script at all?”

T. V. said she was trying hard to be a good little soldier, but she was also talking to Julie on the phone regularly, and those conversations weren’t full of happy talk about Phil. Phil was asking her to sing full-lunged with what’s called “a Broadway belt,” and with more vibrato; i.e., to sing in the exact opposite way Julie wanted her to sing. It was messing with her head. Her attitude during that whole month was mystifying our new director, who had been earnestly trying to get through to her but was now speaking openly to Roberto and me about replacing her.

T. V. couldn’t decide if maybe it would be a blessing to be fired. Several dancers were expressing similar sentiments later that evening. They had just come out of a bewildering meeting that Phil had convened with the dancers, all of whom were looking forward to airing their grievances, and talking about the process going forward. Phil had already gotten on a soapbox to tell me the
problem with Julie’s relationship with the company was that she didn’t listen to their concerns.

“I just want you to know,” said Phil sympathetically to the dancers at the top of that meeting, “if you have a problem, any problem at all with the direction this show is taking—with how rehearsals are being run—really, I mean it—with anything at all . . .
you can leave.
”

One of the dancers quit the show on the spot. There were smiles in the Telsey audition room the day Julie and Danny cast her. And now she was gone, and there were a few more on the ledge that evening. These dancers were feeling exploited, expendable, and unworthy of having an opinion. If Phil had good intentions—giving disgruntled company members an easy way out of their contract instead of forcing them to continue in their indentured servitude—his gesture still managed to come off as misguided. The meeting
did
achieve the one result Phil was looking for, however.
It silenced dissent
. I kept underestimating Phil. He had clearly learned that if you want to keep trapeze artists and poodle trainers in line, sometimes you need the velvet glove, and other times,
the iron fist.

I reported the latest to Edge and Bono, who relayed their concerns to Michael Cohl, who then called me to yell at me: “I should just fire you all!” he shouted. And coming from a guy who had just fired some people, the line had some bite in it. He followed up his yelling with a letter.

I bet on Julie and Julie’s team. They failed me. Not one deadline was ever met. So now it’s in Phil’s hands. Stop second-guessing him. That’s for the Julie Camp people. It’s a closed chapter. P.S. Did u sign your contract?

I saw now that Michael Cohl was a serial monogamist. Fiercely loyal, he remained devoted to Julie long after he was warned she
was heading off-course. And now, in order to be fully loyal to Phil, his disenchantment with the old team had to be total. I mean, it was hardly accurate to say, “Not one deadline was ever met.” That said, there
did
seem to be a greater adherence to the schedule under this new regime. One reason, of course, was that the Tech crew was now well seasoned after all the months of trial and error.

But there was another reason the trains were running on time. Her name was Eileen. Eileen the Unsung. She had been Phil’s assistant for
years
—so many years that I could never retain the exact number, because it always hurt my brain to contemplate it. She was by Phil’s side for circus gigs in Florida, a
Ben Hur Live
spectacular in Germany and London, and on Broadway for
The Boy from Oz
. She had devoted her life to anticipating what Phil would need before Phil knew he needed it. And now with clipboard and laptop, she was shuttling back and forth between the stage manager’s office and the stage, and then up to the rehearsal rooms, and then over to the technical director’s table, all the while constructing schedules, organizing meetings, reminding, revising, facilitating, and getting less sleep than anyone in the building.

Such selflessness, it was almost self-abnegation. But no mere lackey, she was the only one familiar enough with Phil to rap him hard on the knuckles whenever he needed disciplining. Julie had personal assistants, but she never had an Eileen. Perhaps the autumn of 2010 would have gone differently if there
had
been someone like that. But yes, as Michael wrote, it was a closed chapter.

•     •     •

“Today is a sad day,”
Julie wrote me. It was April 17. And the theatre was shutting its doors to the public for twenty-four days after that afternoon’s performance. In just a few hours
Turn Off the Dark
1.0 would be turned off for good. Danny was in town to make a surprise appearance, and to hug the dancers. Julie wanted to know: “Have Bono and Edge seen the new rewrite and direction and choreography?”

In fact, the composers hadn’t seen the new direction and choreography yet. But they were coming back to New York soon. And they
had
seen the latest rewrite.

Glen, it’s your fretful-not-in-the-neighborhood-but-friendly rock star here. I am extremely worried about the corniness that’s crept into the script. Confidentially, I have raised the alarm with MC in quite a dramatic fashion and I expect Phil will feel what I’m saying soon. I think they will look more and more to you to rebalance the ship.

Michael and Phil would continue to ignore Bono’s alarms. Michael had also been ignoring Julie’s increasingly desperate demands to have 1.0 recorded before it was lost forever. He couldn’t tell if Julie’s impulse was sentimental, artistic, or litigative. In any event, he wouldn’t allow it to happen.

Associate director Keith Batten drew a caricature of the Geeks, including Alice Lee in her cat-ears hat reading from a big book of Ovid, containing the story of an artist whose work was destroyed. The drawing was now hanging on the wall backstage, capturing that weird manic energy that was about to disappear from the show. After that day, the four Geeks were out of a job. They took extra bows at the curtain call while behind them three dancers in Spider-Man costumes confidently held up handmade signs in webbed lettering:
BE. BACK. MAY 12
. But this being art, and life, there were no guarantees. Among the Geeks’ going-away gifts
were DVDs of
Rivers and Tides
, the 2001 documentary about the artist Andy Goldsworthy, who constructs sculptures out of natural materials—leaves, pebbles, sticks—that eventually collapse . . . or get swept away . . . or fall apart before they can even be completed. . . .

S
ince late November, it had been the third-highest-grossing show on Broadway.
Turn Off the Dark
had earned more than twenty-five million dollars. More than 245,000 people attended one of its 145 previews. And now we had shut it down. As Patrick Healy of the
Times
pointed out about our shutdown that week, “
Spider-Man
is without historical precedent.” To get entomological, the Foxwoods had turned into a giant cocoon. But what was going to emerge—if anything—was still a matter for debate.

“Glen,” wrote Edge, “I just sent an e-mail to Phil formally requesting that you are given the chance to start rewriting the bad scenes, with or without Roberto, immediately.”

Bono went a step further. Sensing Phil’s continuing reluctance, Bono called me the morning of April 18 with top-priority, top-secret instructions. I was to rewrite the script. Period. Don’t worry about Phil, or Roberto. We hired
them,
not the other way around.
We absolutely
must
replace all the dialogue that, as Bono put it, “sounds like it’s out of
The Waltons
.”