Nine years in the making, the moment came on Saturday to attempt running through the first act of the new musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" without stopping. As the band struck up a gloomy tune that wailed like an ambulance siren, the enormous stage curtain rose to disclose a young woman dangling under a mock-up of the Brooklyn Bridge. Above her appeared a masked man, clad in skin-hugging tights, red and blue and all-American. We know him, but we may not know him, at least according to the musical's creators. In their eyes, Peter Parker (and his alter ego, Spider-Man) is a character on a spiritual quest to reconcile human frailty with the possibility of greatness. It's an idea that so enraptured the director, Julie Taymor, and the composers, Bono and the Edge, of U2, that they have built a $63 million show around him, replete with outlook-skewing scenery and flying sequences that are extraordinary for Broadway.
"Peter Parker is the one," in Ms. Taymor's words, "who shows us how to rise above our petty selves."
If he can fly, that is. Four minutes into the Act I rehearsal, a "Spider-Man" crew member announced on his mic, "We're gonna hold." It was the first of several pauses to deal with technical glitches, mostly in transitions between scenes. By the dinner break, only 15 minutes of the two-and-a-half-hour show had outspread. And the first scheduled performance was just eight days away.
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