The troubled Broadway musical based on Marvel’s Spider-Man has gone through not only shake-ups in production but several injuries since performances began just a few months ago. Today, there’s more.

According to the New York Times, the first major chance in production comes via the removal of the widely-criticized “Geek Chorus” of narrators. The four actors who play the Chorus were notified just yesterday their services would no longer be needed come this Spring when the show goes on hiatus.

The Geek Chorus was created by the director of the musical, Julie Taymor, and one of its script writers, who was recently fired by producers. “Ms. Taymor said in an interview this winter that the geeks were based on the four original creators of the musical: Herself (whose geek stand-in is named Miss Arrow), U2’s Bono and the Edge (named Jimmy-6 and Grim Hunter in the show), and the playwright Glen Berger, who wrote the script with Ms. Taymor and who is represented by geek Professor Cobwell. The loss of the geeks, in other words, represents a particularly personal excision of Ms. Taymor from the “Spider-Man” canvas,” said the NY Times.

Actress T.V. Carpio, who plays the villainous Arachne in Turn Off The Dark, was the latest to be injured mid-performance. The NY Times pointed out that the specific injury was not disclosed but that a person close to the musical said it had something to do with her neck. “The scene that brought harm to Ms. Carpio involves some fairly aggressive hand-to-hand combat between Arachne and Peter, as well as the two characters swooping and swinging from heights to confront each other on stage,” said the NY Times. Carpio is the fifth performer to suffer an injury during the show and the second actress playing Arachne to do so as well.

And lastly, a new choreographer named Chase Brock has been hired to help stage new musical numbers and script revisions. “Daniel Ezralow, meanwhile, the well-respected choreographer who oversaw the current dance, acrobatic and flying numbers, is expected to continue to be listed in the show’s credits — much like the director Julie Taymor, who was sacked by the producers this month over creative disagreements,” said the NY Times.

After breaking on April 19, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is set to resume with an overhauled production on May 12.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 5:14 pm and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.