You may have already heard a new scriptwriter and a new director were hired for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, and you may have read about Julie Taymor comparing the musical to that time she almost died in a volcano. And you may have also heard of Jason Moran’s Spiderman Smackdown, the no-budget Spider-Man musical set to open one day before Turn Off The Dark‘s official opening day, making “Smackdown” the first Spider-Man musical to ever open in New York City. You may have also heard this belabored introductory paragraph will never come to a merciful end . . . until now.
The good news is Spiderman Smackdown ran out of tickets for their opening night one minute after making them available, so they’ve scheduled a second show for March 14th. Meanwhile, ticket prices for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark have been slashed for the first time; last Thursday tickets were spotted for sale at a 30% discount at the TKTS booth. At the same time they’re reducing prices, they’ve been hit with $12,600 in fines by OSHA for safety violations:
During its investigation, the federal agency found that “employees were exposed to the hazards of falls or being struck during flying routines because of improperly adjusted or unsecured safety harnesses.” OSHA also alleges that hazardous conditions were caused by “unguarded open-side floors that lacked fall protection” and said “the company failed to shield employees from being struck by moving overhead rigging components.” Four actors in the show have sustained injuries as a result of the accidents. [WSJ]
What have we learned? Well, if there are four people you’d like to injure and scare the crap out of but you don’t want to kill them or go to jail, just hire them for a play. OSHA will only charge you $12,600 for it. That’s $3,150 per. What a bargain. By the way, if anyone from the Turn Off The Dark crew is reading this, I’ll jump out from behind a hedge and scream at one of your actors for like twenty bucks. Scare ’em real good and you keep an extra $3,130. Think about it.