Broadway’s Spider-Man fiasco: Bono to the rescue

Sometimes even superheroes need rescuing. After the previews of the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark descended into an expensive farce, U2 frontman Bono, along with his guitarist, The Edge, have crossed the world to watch all its remaining previews.
 
In true superhero fashion, the rock stars, who were touring in Australia and New Zealand, will "do what they need to do", a spokesman for the injury-prone show has said.
 
The musical has been Broadway's damsel in distress for some time, with regular technical glitches and forced cancellations. Lead actress Natalie Mendoza even pulled out of the show after suffering a concussion on the first night of previews – a minor bother compared to that of stuntman Christopher Tierney, who fell 20 feet and suffered a fractured skull after a safety rope snapped.
 
U2's capeless crusaders, who also wrote the score for the musical, arrived in New York yesterday and Bono saw a preview of the show for the first time last night.

There is no word on what he made of it, although critics have routinely lambasted both the show and the score, with one critic calling it "an unfocused hodge-podge of story-telling, myth-making and spectacle that comes up short in every department”.

Barring further accidents, the show is scheduled to open on February 7. ·