Spider-man in Sticky Web of Problems???

If you definitely want to see Alan Cumming strutting his stuff on the musical stage in the next year, get yourself down to the West End’s Vaudeville Theatre in the next few days (See News, 8 Jul 2009). His one-man musical offering I Bought a Blue Car Today may be somewhat humbler fare than Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark, the much-anticipated Broadway musical in which he’s been cast as villain the Green Goblin, but at least it’s definitely happening (See The Goss, 9 Jan 2009).

Work on Spider-Man, which is due to receive its world premiere in March 2010 at New York’s Hilton Theatre, has been indefinitely been put on hold because of financial – and, according to rumours, a few other types of – difficulties. At last estimate, some $45 million had gone into the production, an astronomical figure expected to top $50 million by opening.

Spider-Man has a score by U2’s Bono and The Edge and a book by Glen Berger and Julie Taymor, who’s also directing, marking her first major Broadway credit since The Lion King in 1997. The story draws on more than 40 years of Marvel comic stories. If the show does get back on track, a West End transfer is, we hear, still in the pipeline.