“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” went off without injury or any major technical hitch on Thursday night in its first performance back on Broadway since a stunt actor was badly injured after falling more than 20 feet during a scene in Monday night’s show.
There appeared to be no problems with a new safety plan that involved two stagehands, not one, rigging actors into their flying and acrobatic harnesses for the 38 maneuvers that involve aerial sequences or potentially risky choreography. At one point near the end of the show, one stagehand came out onstage to rig the actor Reeve Carney into a harness for a sequence where he scampers across an enormous net and jumps from it; no second stagehand was visible, though crew members might have started rigging up Mr. Carney before the scene began. The stunts went fine in that scene for Mr. Carney, who plays Peter Parker and is one of the actors playing Spider-Man.
Before Thursday night’s performance began, the lead producer of “Spider-Man,” Michael Cohl, took the stage and told the packed house at the Foxwoods Theater that the injured performer, Christopher Tierney, had undergone surgery and would begin rehabilitation on Monday. The audience applauded loudly at the mention of Mr. Tierney, whose accident has drawn wide news media coverage and led state and federal workplace safety officials to insist on the new plan to help protect the actors.
Several audience members said on Thursday night that they had purchased tickets to the musical — the most expensive ever on Broadway, at $65 million, and the most technically ambitious — in part because of the news media coverage this week. These theater-goers said they had been curious about the stunt work in the show and its mix of artistry and technical elements. The production itself, however, drew mixed responses.
“There is a reason for having out-of-town tryouts for a major new musical before coming to Broadway, and while I know it’s expensive, ‘Spider-Man’ would have been helped a whole lot by one,” said Kenny Solms, a longtime comedy writer who helped create “The Carol Burnett Show” on television and whose play “It Must Be Him” ran in September at Off Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons. “And based on the seven minutes or so of flying in a three-hour show tonight, I have to see that if I’d wanted to see flying, it’s more magical and memorable in ‘Peter Pan.’”
But David Ravikoff, a tourist from Washington, who said that the recent media hubbub was one reason he wanted to see the show, said that he was dazzled by the creativity and the special effects.
“I was sort of expecting it to be ‘Spider-Man’ as we’ve all come to know the comic-book story, but the show had these wild, mythological, psychosexual dramatic layers that I loved, that I thought were so Julie Taymor,” said Mr. Ravikoff, referring to the “Spider-Man” director, who also directed “The Lion King” musical and the films “Across the Universe” and “The Tempest,” among others. He added, “I’m not really sure what was going on in parts, but I was totally impressed.”
Absent on Thursday night was one of the lead actresses, Natalie Mendoza, who had been out of the show for a couple of weeks early this month with a concussion; though she and the rest of the cast had not performed since Monday night, she was ordered on vocal rest by her doctor, according to a “Spider-Man” spokesman. An understudy played the role of the spider villainess Arachne.
The actors Ari Loeb and Kyle Post divvied up the roles and stunt work usually shouldered by Mr. Tierney, meanwhile.
The producers had canceled the musical’s two shows on Wednesday, at a cost of roughly $400,000 in ticket sales, to put a new safety plan in place for the 38 aerial and stage maneuvers that involve actors hoisted and tethered in harnesses. State safety inspectors visited the Foxwoods Theater on Thursday afternoon and gave final approval to the new safety measures, which involve two stagehands securing each actor in a harness and then telling a stage manager that the maneuver is ready to begin, as opposed to the past practice of a single stagehand simply rigging each actor.
“All of the safety redundancies are in place,” Leo Rosales, the spokesman for the inspectors with the New York State Department of Labor, said on Thursday afternoon.
“Spider-Man,” with music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and the Edge in their Broadway debut, has pushed back its opening night to give more time to Ms. Taymor and the rest of the creative team to continue working on the show. Previously set for Jan. 11, 2011, the new opening night is Feb. 7.
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