Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History Read Free

remnants of her own work. But! Athena didn’t allow Arachne to die. Instead, she transformed the girl into the world’s first spider. Arachne, an artist condemned to the shadows; Arachne, weaving her gossamer threads for eternity; Arachne, the future mother of all spiders. Arachne . There we go—Spark, meet Tinder. Julie had her hook. She called Tony. She was in.
    In Ireland, in February 2003, Julie introduced Arachne to her new collaborators. They would meet again in the South of France, enthusiastically spinning musical and narrative ideas. By March 2004, Marvel had signed off on the creative team and, nine months after that, Neil Jordan delivered a twenty-two-page treatment to Julie, outlining the thirty scenes of their prospective musical.
    What Julie read that January was detailed, imaginative, dark, and dauntingly . . . cinematic .
    Neil Jordan has almost always been the author of the films he has directed. Mona Lisa, Michael Collins, The Butcher Boy— Mr. Jordan can point to an impressive résumé as a writer. But he had never written for the theatre. And when Julie encouraged him to let his imagination run free, he gravitated toward scenes with complicated effects that would be almost impossible to render on a stage.
    Julie delivered a wildebeest stampede in The Lion King . If you can serve up a wildebeest stampede, what can’t you deliver on a stage? Well, really scrutinize that stampede. Because you first hear the distant rumbling of hooves, but no, snap out of it—those aren’t hooves, they’re kettledrums. And on the horizon, that blurry herd kicking up dust and getting nearer? They’re just paintings of animals on a long scroll that’s spinning fast. There’s no dust, no horizon. And they’re not getting nearer—larger wildebeest puppets have simply been introduced. And the charging wildebeests now full-sized and practically on top of you? They don’t even look like wildebeests—they’re dancers with hairy pants and horned shields stamping their feet to louder drums. And Julie staged it this way because her objective wasn’t to render reality. It was to make an impression .
    So, it was really Neil Jordan the screenwriter who described in his treatment how Peter and Mary Jane’s big second-act love song “is interrupted by a wind, which drags hats, umbrellas, deckchairs, even a little girl in its wake. Peter grabs the little girl, holds her to the trunk of a swaying tree. Then, freezing rain, encasing everyone in icicles . . .”
    His treatment depicted Norman Osborn as a fanatical scientist who becomes disfigured during a laboratory experiment. However,in Neil Jordan’s telling, Norman Osborn never becomes the Green Goblin, and the narrative’s primary villain is Arachne. Continuing a predilection seen in such films of his as The Crying Game or The Miracle, Mr. Jordan zeroed in on Arachne’s potential for sexual unorthodoxy. Norman Osborn, flirting with the disguised Arachne, “strokes Arachne’s shoe, remarks on the delicacy of the foot beneath it. ‘There are more where that came from,’ she remarks, whereupon another foot probes his crotch, reducing him to paroxysms of ecstasy. . . . More and more legs emerge and twine around him, and his song of ecstasy becomes a wail of terror . . .”
    Mr. Jordan’s culminated with Spider-Man vanquishing the unrepentant spider-woman. Peter sends her “hurtling toward the dark waters of the Hudson” to her death.
    “It was all and always you,” sings Mary Jane.
    “I loved you. And he loved you,” Peter sings.
    “But you are he. Even now you love me.”
    And Peter Parker bends down toward Mary Jane, turning upside down on his web, and kisses her again.
    The End.
    After reading what Neil had delivered, Tony and Julie gave Neil their notes. Or rather, their one note: They were cutting him loose . The awkwardness of the situation wasn’t lost on Julie. After all, Neil had brought her onto the project in the first place. It pained her