Entertainment

Hell hath no fury like a Taymor lawsuit

Treachery is the worst sin in Dante’s “Inferno.”

Those who betray friends are consigned to the ninth and deepest circle of hell, where they’re scattered in a frozen lake “as straw in glass.” At the center, frozen to his chest, is Satan, and “scutched like wretches” between the teeth of his three mouths are history’s greatest traitors: Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Caesar, and Judas, who betrayed Jesus.

Julie Taymor, the ousted director of “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark,” has her own take on the ninth circle. It’s called a lawsuit.

Here, frozen in her lake — represented by a giant circle of ice-blue colored silk, hand-sewn in Indonesia — are straw puppets doubled over like “bows bent tight.” They are her producers: Michael Cohl, Jeremiah Harris and the hapless David Garfinkle.

At the lake’s center is the face of Scar, looking very much like Jeremy Irons with fangs. Dangling from two of his three mouths are Bono and The Edge, “their backs being skinned so as to leave not a patch.”

In the third mouth, being ground head first, is the greatest traitor of all — Taymor’s co-writer, Glen Berger.

“She hates him more than anyone,” says a source. “She feels he’s the architect of all that’s happened.”

Taymor filed suit against the producers of “Spider-Man” this week, claiming they violated her contract by using her script and designs without her permission. She also says she’s owed at least $1 million in damages.

The last person named in the suit is Berger.

Taymor claims that, while her show was foundering in previews last December, Berger went behind her back to discuss with the producers “certain revisions to the book without Taymor’s knowledge or consent.”

Last March, she claims, “the producers began to implement the changes to [the script] that they and Berger secretly [emphasis added] had been planning for months. No one sought or obtained Taymor’s consent to make these changes.”

Several production sources have confirmed that when Taymor refused to change her script, Berger met secretly with the producers and said he’d do anything — anything — they wanted. Sources say he sketched in a new book, which he never showed Taymor.

When she was fired in March, he remained with the show and went to work with the new writer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.

Taymor, sources say, was devastated.

After all, she’d plucked Berger from obscurity to replace her original co-writer, Neil Jordan, who saw this train wreck coming and got out of the way.

Before “Spider-Man,” Berger’s only claim to fame was a little play called “Underneath the Lintel,” which was performed off- Broadway in 2001. Twelve people saw it.

Berger was Taymor’s fuzzy hand puppet, as her suit confirms.

The suit cites a deal memo that states: “Berger shall collaborate with Julie Taymor . . . however, Julie Taymor, in her sole and absolute discretion, shall have final approval on all decisions.”

Taymor, however, looked out for Berger.

“The guy had no money,” says a source, “and Julie made sure he got paid as soon as the show started previews.”

Taymor, in her suit, is seeking to bar Berger from using any of their work in future productions of “Spider-Man.” Meanwhile, in her Inferno, he continues to be ground up with “noise like butchers cracking bits of chine.”

Never in the history of puppetry has there been such a Judas.