Review - The Spidey Project: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

In the roughly five years between November of 1935 and December of 1940, the team of Rodgers and Hart opened nine new musicals on Broadway. These included revolutionary shows like On Your Toes, which changed the use of dance in musical theatre, and the underappreciated Pal Joey, which brought new sophistication to the characters and themes that could be featured in a musical. There were also popular hits like Babes In Arms, The Boys From Syracuse, Jumbo and Too Many Girls that introduced classic American songbook entries like "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady Is A Tramp," "Falling In Love With Love," "My Romance" and "I Didn't Know What Time It Was."

During a similarly-lengthed period of the 1930s, Cole Porter opened six musicals whose scores included "You're The Top," "I Get A Kick Out Of You," "Begin the Beguine," "It's De-Lovely," "At Long Last Love," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," and "Friendship."

George and Ira Gershwin? From 1920 until 1935 they would typically have two or three new shows open per year; sometimes full scores, sometimes contributing a song or two, working separately or as a pair. Their Pulitzer Prize winner, Of Thee I Sing, opened just four months after their previous musical. Their classic, Girl Crazy, which included "But Not For Me," "I Got Rhythm" and "Embraceable You," premiered nine months after their last full score.

Yes, these were geniuses of the American musical theatre and the business of Broadway has changed a lot since their day. But while shows are running longer, the books and scores serve the story-telling more fully and production values are higher, is Broadway suffering because it no longer fosters an environment where those who write musicals can let go With a healthy blast of creative energy that can be put on stage relatively quickly? This season's Catch Me If You Can will have the first Broadway score by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman since the Martin Short revue, Fame Becomes Me, back in 2006. Earlier this season we saw David Yazbeck and Jeffrey Lane's first Broadway opening since 2005 and the follow-up to Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin's debut as composer and lyricist back in 2006. Robert Lopez and Frank Wildhorn will also be making their returns to Broadway, since 2003 and 2004, respectively.

Nobody's expecting these people to whip up a hit every year, but, despite the outstanding talent that is out there creating quality material, the economics of theatre is leaving it unlikely that Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman and John Kander & Fred Ebb will be succeeded by artists given the opportunity to develop long-enough resumes to be recognizable outside of Sardi's and Marie's Crisis as writers for the American musical theatre.

But at 3:05am on the morning of February 11th, 2011, playwright Justin Moran, who wrote the book and lyrics for last season's Fringe Festival hit, Pope!, set out to strike a blow for healthy blasts of creative energy. He posted a video on Facebook and YouTube declaring that, With a budget of zero, he could have a perfectly good musical about Spider-Man written, produced and ready to play in front of an audience and be seen by the press on March 14th, the night before the then-scheduled opening night for Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

Exactly four weeks, three days and seventeen hours later, at 8:05pm on March 14th, I was seated at The People's Improv Theatre as the lights went down for the premiere performance of The Spidey Project: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. (The second and final scheduled performance took place at 10pm that evening.) And when the lights went up again after the curtain calls, exactly one hour later, the immediate thought that came to my mind was this...

He did it.

Collaborating With writers, actors, designers and a production team made up of talented people who were volunteering their time and creativity, he delivered a perfectly enjoyable musical comedy. Without the benefit of multiple workshops, out of town tryouts and weeks (or months) of previews, the book and lyrics (by Moran and Jon Roufaeal) and the music (the 12 songs were split between composers Adam Podd and Doug Karsaros) were at least as good as the average new Broadway musical of the last ten years.

This was not an edgy spoof of the genre or a winking satire of Julie Taymor's troubles. It was traditional musical theatre With catchy pop-rock music, lyrics that actually rhymed, and a book and score that worked well together to tell a clear story With genuine Wit, charm and empathy.

Directed by Moran, Travis Nilan played the central role of Peter With a combination of nerdy earnestness and gritty rock-star determination as the high-school kid who, while on assignment as a newspaper intern, gets spider-bit in the laboratory of super-genius scientist, Dr. Spiderman (played by Moran), who pronounces his name With a short "i" vowel sound. (This becomes an important plot point when the story takes a turn toward Cold War espionage.)

A very funny scene has Peter trying to explain his confusion about the changes happening in his body to his noble Uncle Ben (Michael Lutton), who mistakenly thinks the boy needs a talk about puberty. But what he really needs is a way to keep his pretty crush, Gwen (Liz Bachman), away from his tough-guy rival, Flash (Ryan Nelson). A highlight of the evening is when Nelson leads the company in a comical salsa number (choreographed by David Rossetti) about his favorite "romantic" restaurant chain.

The strong singing and spiritedly clowning company also included Claire Neumann as Peter's infatuated co-worker, Louie Pearlman as his outlandishly sexist boss and Robin Rothman as his loving Aunt May.

The set was simply a wall With different sets of comic book panel art work hung up to provide a background for each scene. The audience loudly cheered With approval when Spider-Man's flying was simulated just by having actors lift and lower hand-held drawings of buildings. There was also plenty of loud appreciation for Dylan Giannunzio's fight choreography.

Off-Off Broadway productions generally do not stir up much interest outside of the friends and family of those involved and the national attention given to Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the smart use of social media and the fact that all tickets were free certainly had a lot to do With The Spidey Project's two packed houses. But still, here I was among a hundred people who were obviously having a swell time at a traditionally crafted musical comedy With no name stars and no high production values; nothing but the cleverness of the words, attractiveness of the music and the skills of the performers and interpreters to entertain them. It wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime event, years in the making. It was a fun night out. And perhaps if someone can figure out an economical way to produce other fun nights out that audiences can attend With the same spontaneity as they do when deciding to go to a movie, while providing fair compensation for the creators and employees, musical theatre can once again become the kind of mainstream entertainment that allows our top writers and composers to create in abundance and With abandon.

Top photo: Travis Nilan; Bottom: Justin Moran.

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