| "Lion King" was the anti-"Beauty and the Beast," a show that threw out the visual style of Disney's animated storytelling and started over. But it's built on such a powerful narrative, strongly shaped, Taymor didn't have to worry about clarifying or even emotional suspense. (This was tried with "Tarzan" and didn't work, so it's certainly not enough to just start anew). Something like "Spiderman" requires the opposite set of skills: a director who'd raise the stakes and pull an audience into a tale not traditionally told in theater. She used it as a jumping off place, to ruminate on classic and mythic themes rather than annotate them. It stopped the show cold in places. She couldn't find the "push" in the story, that drive that makes us lean forward from the start. It was a startling lapse in judgement about what the audience wanted from the material. That's what I couldn't get past -- how oblivious she was to the 2000 people walking in there 8 times a week who wanted, you know, a "Spiderman" musical that thrilled 'em from its first moments. To be fair, the story was weak, and the score kind of a non-starter. |
