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At long last, Spider-Man is ready to do some serious web-slinging on Broadway. And what do we get after $70 million, nine years of work and 183 previews? Silly string and paper streamers.
Welcome to your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man — emphasis on the friendly.
“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the busy musical spectacle that opened last night, tries very hard to be fun and accessible. After many upheavals and accidents, firings and rewrites, the show is closer than ever to the bull’s eye, but that’s not saying much: The target has been both broadened and lowered. The point of reference is Joel Schumacher’s family-ready “Batman,” not Christopher Nolan’s dark, arty one.
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The team that rebooted the behemoth by Julie Taymor, Bono and The Edge in March certainly has streamlined things.
Script doctor Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and “creative consultant” Philip William McKinley have tidied up Taymor’s haphazard vision, cutting both the Geek Chorus and the director’s more bizarre inventions; only fans of cheesetastic clunkers will miss the preposterous shoe-fetish number.
The plot now includes more back story, and follows a straight line from point A to point B. At least we can tell what’s going on.
In short: Shy teenager Peter Parker (Reeve Carney) is bitten by a mutant spider, acquires superpowers and secures the love of sweetheart Mary Jane Watson (Jennifer Damiano).
Peter/Spider-Man’s big trial is his battle against Green Goblin (a brazenly hammy Patrick Page), a crowd-pleasing villain who dispatches corny one-liners, sings “I’ll Take Manhattan” from the top of the Chrysler Building and unleashes the destructive Sinister Six.
At least Peter gets inspiration from Arachne (T.V. Carpio), a spidery character out of Greek mythology who’s “the voice within [his] heart.”
Visually speaking, the show bears Taymor’s outlandish stamp, carried out through the characters’ masks, George Tsypin’s boldly graphic sets and Eiko Ishioka’s fantastical costumes. In “Behold and Wonder,” aerialists weave a gigantic orange tapestry — fans of “The Lion King” will be in familiar territory. And anything involving skyscrapers looks fantastic, placing the characters against skewed, Cubist perspectives.
Following the infamous technical mishaps, the kinks in the flying sequences have been ironed out; everyone’s been taking off and landing without a hitch. Spidey and the Goblin zoom by impressively, close to the audience’s heads, but the overall effect is more competent than awe-inspiring, more Six Flags than magic. How weird that this is an extravaganza without a single genuine showstopper.
Over the past few months, Bono and The Edge tweaked their lyrics and wrote a new song. When it revels in U2’s trademark soaring, romantic grandiosity, the score easily fills the cavernous Foxwoods Theatre.
The numbers that work best are those performed by Carney and Damiano. These evocative performers project the awkward sweetness of teenage yearning in duets such as “Picture This” and “If the World Should End.” (Matthew James Thomas, who plays Peter at matinees, is a less impressive singer, but a sensitive actor.)
The title tune is also quite beautiful, maybe because it owes a lot to This Mortal Coil’s Goth-pop cult hit “Song to the Siren.”
But some numbers land with a thud. Peter’s great-awakening number, “Bouncing Off the Walls,” is defeated by a torpid, lazy chorus, while the Goblin’s new patter song, “A Freak Like Me,” sounds tired. “I’m a $65 million circus tragedy”? If you say so, Greenie.
In the last year, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has gone from artistic oddity to conventional family entertainment. Between that and the strength of its brand name, it’s ready to join Madame Tussauds and Shake Shack on a tourist’s Times Square itinerary.
elisabeth.vincentelli@nypost.com