She has been forced to step down as director, but in Spider-Man Julie Taymor created a brilliant critique of US grandiosity
If you want to see Julie Taymor's Spider-Man, you're out of luck. Her production closed last week, and what opens in late May will be an altered production over which she has zero creative control.
When I saw the show in early March, about a month after most critics laid into it, I have to say I loved it, at least to start with: the Spider-Man origin story unfolded in the first act with great visual and emotional energy. There were some postmodern touches from the start ? a "geek chorus" that was writing the show we were witnessing, and a beautiful, terrifying maternal figure, Arachne, who hovered over the stage ? but, all in all, it was traditional fare. At the interval, I turned to my friend and said, "I really like this!" Certainly whatever was so horrible about this show, I thought, must be coming up, because what I'd seen simply wasn't in any way bad.
I knew from the reviews that the real trouble was in the second act. While a few critics liked or were at least intrigued by what they'd seen, our most established critics were as negative as I've ever seen them be. Ben Brantley said the show "may rank among the worst" musicals ever on Broadway. David Cote called it a "deeply confused, ugly, ultimately boring example of artistic hubris enabled by financial excess". Charles McNulty wrote that "the second act transforms into a videogame" and that "the real villainy is Taymor's overreaching desire to top herself".
So the second act began. Almost immediately it was clear we were in a different realm. The origin story was done, the villains vanquished; suddenly Arachne loomed at the centre. I turned to my friend in disbelief ? just what were we witnessing? Peter Parker, feeling too anxious to be Spider-Man, has thrown away his superhero garb, and is now in a dream realm where this strange eight-legged maternal creature is attempting to seduce and control him, suck him into her lonely and grandiose world.
As this story began to dominate, I started to feel alienated ? and at the same time more absorbed by Taymor's strange vision. Was I really witnessing a $65m (�39m) musical about the horrors of adolescence? The essential function of the pubescent geek chorus ? its elaborate plots designed to forestall a terrifying awareness of how overwhelming life is becoming ? suddenly seemed clear. Peter Parker's being delivered over to the tempting, illusory promises of narcissism in the guise of Arachne was as startling a plot development, and penetrating an image, as I've ever seen in a Broadway musical.
It is this dilemma ? the adolescent's difficulties in reconciling narcissism and ordinariness ? that Taymor wanted to explore. Her second act story also evokes the most difficult questions of American life. Whether we are debating action in Libya or a universal healthcare programme, the questions are the same: When we seek to do a lot, are we being delusional and grandiose? When we claim we can do little, are we seeking to avoid the challenges life demands we face? Spider-Man offered deep and, because it acknowledged the messiness and complexity of life, unsatisfying answers.
At the end of the performance I saw, Peter Parker becomes a responsible young adult who avoids Arachne's grandiosity yet refuses to sink into apathetic anonymity. At the moment he was meant to soar as Spider-Man one final time, the actor unhooked the wires he was wearing and walked offstage. I learned later that this was not the intended ending (a technical problem made it unsafe to fly), but in that moment I wondered if Taymor hadn't also given us that shocking image ? of a young man deciding to be a hero, but knowing that in reality, we can't fly. Even the technical misfires somehow fit into Taymor's profound themes. Her Spider-Man was not a grandiose musical, it was a critique of grandiosity ? a superhero musical that deconstructed superheroes. That her producers decided to shut it down and strip it of her most original contributions says less about her directorial competence and more about our cultural mindset. Questioning American ambition, rather than exploiting our infantile belief in it, is not only something the market will not tolerate ? it's something the market must punish.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/apr/27/julie-taymor-spider-man
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