... "Pin It")
Like any good populist entertainment (with $100 ticket prices…), the crew of the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark Broadway musical have responded to audience complaints (and early reviewers’?) that the ending lacks some punch by changing the final scene. ArtsBeat’s Patrick Healy reports that the new finale, which debuted yesterday, has Spidey giving up the emotionally fulfilling but financially and physically strenuous business of superheroism to become an investment banker.
Or, rather, the new finale substitutes an awesome new aerial sequence (creating a few more opportunities for the city’s stuntmen) for the boring kiss between Peter Parker and Mary Jane that the poor suckers who saw one of the first sixty previews had to sit through—which, Healy points out, was a temporary solution all along!
The show is still slated for a March 15 opening after the most recent (and final, according to lead producer Michael Cohl) round of delays, which includes the addition of this new ending and various other tweaks being made to the rest of the show. So far, Spider-Man has been doing just about the amount of box office business it’ll need to sustain for four years in order to make back investors’ money. Maybe the new ending will put the show over the edge and out of the red just in time for opening.