Unfinished (Show) Business

In recent weeks, much has been made of the fact that the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have been charging what some are calling unforgivable sums to see previews of a multi-million dollar spectacle that still seems as if it has more than a few demons to wrestle with. Everyone knows by now about the acrobatics that have proven to be tragically dangerous. According to several commentators, furthermore, the story’s still a hopelessly jumbled mess. How dare they expect people to pay big bucks for a show that’s in such a shambles?

Rather than wade directly into what have proven to be somewhat heated discussions on the subject, however, I’d like to approach it from a slightly different angle.

In 2009, my wife and I managed to catch a performance of what has begun to be affectionately referred to as iHo: The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, the newest Tony Kushner opus. We’re both unabashed fans of his entire oeuvre, and we felt (on arriving at the theater) as if we might be about to witness the birth of the next Great American Play.

That’s probably because we hadn’t heard any of the scuttlebutt about the production before we arrived. Stories about the playwright feverishly delivering new scenes hours before curtain, re-writing and re-writing trying to make things work: the sort of classic images that bring Moss Hart’s Act One immediately to mind. By the time the 3.5-hour show was on its feet, I understand, even Kushner had begun referring to it as a workshop production.

My wife and I didn’t need even one of those hours to agree with him. What we experienced was nothing short of a big hot mess. It was full of possibility, but very little of its potential had been realized. The problems, furthermore, were not part of the production: they lay in the script itself. Given that the play will now be going up at the Public Theater more than a year later, I can only assume they’ve been addressed; I hope to be able to see the show and find out for myself. He had, as far as I could tell, his work cut out for him.

Here’s the thing, though: never once did my wife or I resent the fact that Kushner had shared his work when it was still in such a bedraggled state. The man is an artist; he’s not a factory, churning out one play after another that works in the same mechanized perfect fashion. He has to be expected and allowed to fail. I want him to fail, in fact, if only because I assume he’ll learn from his failures and go on to do bigger and better things. I’ll even gladly buy tickets to watch him fail. His worst work is still more instructive and entertaining than others’ greatest efforts. He’s Tony Kushner, after all.

What I do have trouble with is the fact that the show was actually presented as a finished piece of work. Ticket prices were appropriately high. The scenic design was absolutely lavish. Everything about the experience contextualized the play as perfected, or at least as perfected as any piece of art ever gets. I wish that hadn’t been the case. I’d rather the Guthrie had charged me less, spent less on design, photocopied the programs, and (in sum) changed our expectations. I’d have enjoyed it a lot more.

Of course, the Guthrie almost certainly didn’t know the script was a problem until it was far too late to make such decisions. By the time any issues emerged, all they could probably do was soldier on and make the most of what they had… so I forgive them as well.

Which brings us back to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. For some reason, it isn’t as easy for me to forgive in this instance. I think what I’m struggling with is the perception that the show seems to be more spectacle than story; more web-slinging than the intricate web of narrative. (No one would make a similar claim about iHo, which contains few if any of the more dream-inspired elements familiar to fans of Kushner from Angels in America.) The whole enterprise feels a bit hollow, if bejeweled: a pink plastic Easter egg, perhaps, when what is wanted is something more hard-boiled and nutritious. My inclination is to be more kind to theater that feeds us.

And yet… what the producers of Spider-Man have definitely done right is to call the show what it is: a run of previews. Nobody’s calling the musical finished, not by a long shot. They have more than another month, in fact, to rebuild the missing story and address the technical and safety issues. For that, if for nothing else, they deserve a pass… at least until opening night.

What might have helped both shows, however, is some sort of “in-between” option: a way to cast both iHo (in its original incarnation) and Spider-Man as workshop productions without diminishing the interest in both plays or conveying anything less than pride in a work that – so what? – is still in progress. What is wanted, really, is a culture of openness and transparency: a willingness to expose our work as it develops, rather than waiting for it to find its level, and a curiosity among audiences to engage with a story before a bow has been wrapped around it.

How to begin to arrive at such a state? I will save that consideration for my next blog post…