Julie Taymor's Original Spider-Man, Versus the 2011 Rewrite
Exhibit J: Two Versions of the Same Show
It is common shorthand to say Julie Taymor "left" Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark in the spring of 2011. That framing skips the more interesting fact: the show that closed in previews that March and the show that officially opened three months later were substantially different pieces of theater, built around different structural choices, not just a different name in the director's credit.
Taymor's version, which ran in previews from late 2010, staged the story as what she described as a rock-and-roll circus drama, narrated in part by a device called the "Geek Chorus" -- four teenage characters who introduced the plot and periodically stepped outside it to comment on the action, a framing borrowed more from downtown experimental theater than from mainstream Broadway musicals. Structurally, the production ran on two villains rather than one. Alongside the Green Goblin, Taymor built an entire second antagonist out of Arachne, a figure drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses myth of the weaver transformed into a spider. In Taymor's telling, Arachne was not a minor supernatural aside; she pursued Peter Parker as both obsession and threat, culminating in a climax where she confronted him directly rather than simply cheering him on from the sidelines. The production gave her an entire musical number, "Deeply Furious," built around Arachne and her spider-women followers, staging choices that reviewers at the time singled out as some of the show's strangest and most divisive moments.
Exhibit K: The 2011 Overhaul, Line by Line
The creative team that took over in spring 2011 was announced by name, not left vague. Director Philip William McKinley joined in a consulting role that effectively replaced Taymor's staging decisions, comic-book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa -- who had written Spider-Man and Fantastic Four titles for Marvel before this job -- came on to rework the book, and choreographer Chase Brock was brought in for additional choreography. Aguirre-Sacasa was specifically sought out for his familiarity with the source material, a signal in itself about what the producers thought had gone wrong: not the songs, but the story's relationship to the comics it was supposedly adapting.
The changes were concrete and specific rather than cosmetic. The Geek Chorus was cut entirely. "Deeply Furious" was cut entirely. Arachne's role was rewritten from a scheming, dual antagonist into a spirit-guide figure who appears mainly in Peter's dreams and encourages him toward heroism rather than competing with the Green Goblin for control of the plot -- a shift that also meant the production went from a two-villain structure to a single-villain one, closer to the comics and films most of the audience already knew. Patrick Page's Green Goblin, freed from sharing the villain role, received a new number written for the revised version, "A Freak Like Me Needs Company," that had no equivalent in Taymor's original. About twenty minutes came out of the total running time. The production paused previews for roughly three weeks that spring to implement the changes before returning to performances and eventually reaching its official opening on June 14, 2011.
None of this means the score changed authorship -- Bono and The Edge remained the credited composers throughout, which is the detail most casual retellings settle on. But "the songs stayed the same" undersells what happened musically: several numbers were reworked or cut along with the book changes, orchestrations shifted to fit the leaner staging, and the new Green Goblin number was written specifically to fill the space Arachne's reduced role left behind. The score most audiences heard after June 2011 was not the same sequence of music Taymor had staged the previous winter, even though the same two names remained on the credits.
The actor who originated Arachne left the production during previews for reasons unrelated to the creative direction -- an injury sustained backstage, covered along with the rest of the show's original company on this site's dedicated cast retrospective. Her departure and the character's later rewrite are two separate threads that happened to overlap in the same season, and conflating them is part of why the "Taymor left, nothing else changed" version of this story persists.
INTERROGATION: TAYMOR VS. THE REWRITE FAQ
What did Julie Taymor's original version of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark look like?
Taymor's original staging framed the story as a rock-and-roll circus drama narrated in part by a device called the "Geek Chorus," four teenage characters who introduced and commented on the plot. Arachne, modeled on the weaver from Ovid's Metamorphoses, functioned as a second major antagonist alongside the Green Goblin, with a musical number, "Deeply Furious," built around her and her spider-women followers.
Why was Arachne originally the show's central figure rather than a side character?
Taymor built the production's mythology around Arachne rather than treating her as a minor supernatural device. In her version, Arachne pursued Peter Parker as both a romantic obsession and a threat, and the original climax turned on her confronting him directly, giving the character far more stage time and narrative weight than the Green Goblin, who is the sole central villain in most other Spider-Man adaptations.
What specifically changed after the spring 2011 creative overhaul?
The producers cut the Geek Chorus and the "Deeply Furious" number entirely, reduced Arachne from a scheming antagonist to a spirit-guide figure who appears mainly in Peter's dreams, and shifted the Green Goblin into the story's single main villain. About twenty minutes were trimmed from the running time, and Patrick Page's Green Goblin received a new number, "A Freak Like Me Needs Company," that was not part of the original production.
Did the Bono and The Edge score change during the rewrite?
The core score stayed credited to Bono and The Edge throughout, but it was not left untouched: several existing numbers were reworked or cut, orchestrations were adjusted, and at least one new song was added for the revised production, so "the score stayed the same" is only true in the broadest sense of authorship.