Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has yet to kill anyone, but could it end up murdering the Broadway Flop? No show in Broadway history has ever battled through such a dizzying array of troubles as Spider-Man: Turn Off Dark. The buzz hasn’t just been bad, it’s been genocidal.  And like the war in Afghanistan or The Passion of the Charlie Sheen, there seems to be no end in sight. This week brought news that director Julie Taymor has been fired/quit the production and the supposedly really, really, real opening date of March 15th has just gone the way of the dodo. Yet the production continues to perform gravity-defying feats of box office wonderment. The producers love the free publicity. Critics are having adjective orgasms crafting witty, bitchy prose. Federal, state and local authorities are only too happy to enlist the show’s help in fixing historic deficits by fining it for countless safety violations. And the suddenly contract-endangered Glenn Beck is relieved to pontificate on a subject that doesn’t involve eschatology. Everyone, it seems, is happy to have Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark in their life. The only people who shouldn’t be happy are theatre fans. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark may not be the catalyst for one of Beck’s certain-to-arrive-any-minute-now apocalypses, but it very well could be the canary in the coalmine for an even more tragic End Time: The Death of The Broadway Flop. Devotees of film, literature and music rarely focus their café conversations on the Cutthroat Islands, Ancient Evenings, and Garth Brooks in the Life of Chris Gaineses of the canon.  But if you love theatre, it’s a given that at some point in the last month you’ve incanted “Carrie: The Musical,” “Moose Murders” or “Dance of the Vampires” in the hushed, haunted...

“The Ancient Greeks reserved a special word for the sort of arrogance that makes you forget your own humanity. That word was Hubris.” — From an introductory essay included in the Playbill of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Note to Julie Taymor, Bono and The Edge: When creating a $65 million dollar musical beset by more accidents than those found in the diapers of my nine-month old niece, it’s not a good idea to feature an essay in your show’s program about Hubris. But then again, the entire production history of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark reeks of Hubris. And Hubris was at the heart of what I saw on the night of December 20th when, during a preview performance, Christopher Tierney (one of the many actors who portrays the flying Spider-Man) plummeted 30 feet into an orchestra pit, causing the performance to come to a premature end with seven minutes left. In truth, I was there to see an accident. Not an accident that endangered the life of an actor, mind you, but a theatrical one.  I had missed the opportunity to feast upon such legendary Broadway turkeys as Dance of the Vampires, Lestat, and Carrie: The Musical. And the larger-than-life elements and Jupiter-sized egos involved with Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark seemed to ensure that the show was either going to be a unmitigated disaster or a genuine work of theatrical genius like Taymor’s The Lion King. I know what you’re thinking now– Aside from the stage accident, how was the show? To assist me in answering this question, I’ve enlisted my buddy Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who knew a few things about Hubris. As anyone who’s taken a freshman year theatre class knows, Aristotle broke down Greek Tragedy (and thus...