Last week’s Spider-Man musical showdown seems to have had a successful conclusion, inasmuch as it resulted in positive press releases being sent out. Former Live Nation president Michael Cohl has been brought in to make sure the financially beleaguered production actually makes it to the stage; the inexperienced David Garfinkel, whose missteps are widely believed to be part of the problem, has been demoted to third, after Jeremiah J. Harris.

Most importantly, actor/musician Reeve Carney has been officially cast as Spider-Man; Carney stars in director Julie Taymor’s The Tempest as Prince Ferdinand, and heads his own band, Carney.

While people are saying the show will go on, no one is saying when — Spidey the Musical will miss is previous February start, and probably this year’s Tony Award nomination cut-off, as well.

UPDATE: It seems that today is the day of decision, as the NY Times and Post report. Today a meeting is being held to decide the future of the show. Fingers crossed!

John Horn in the LA Times finally has a fully researched–he’s even read the script– story on the sprawling mess that is the Spider-Man musical. The death of a key player, scheduling conflicts, inexperienced producers — you name it. It’s a rogue gallery of woes. The show has a total budget of $52 million and would need $1 million a week just to keep running. The biggest problem with the troubled production — originally slated to open next February but rehearsals haven’t even begun and a lack of funds seems to have stopped all progress — was its incredible ambitions, which would have made it the most spectacular musical ever staged:

The opening bridge scene is followed closely by the arrival of a giant web woven by Arachne, a temptress who is the musical’s central invention. “A giant loom is revealed — seven actors swing on vertical silks to form a tapestry,” the stage directions read. At another point, Spider-Man is so busy battling bank robbers and muggers that he multiplies into five different crime-fighting superheroes. One of the duplicate spiders swings over the audience, landing on the balcony.

Yet some folks remain hopeful that it will get additional funding, among them show composer Bono:

“For me it’s this wonderful thing of escaping from the first-person songwriting, to disappear into these outside characters, it’s just been a thrill of a ride,” Bono said. “You spend so much time digging up diamonds in your own music; it’s a treat to dig in somebody’s else’s dirt. To work on these songs was like a playpen.”

According to the piece in addition to previously confirmed Evan Rachel Wood as MJ and Alan Cumming as Green Goblin, Spider-Man would be played, as much speculated by Reeve Carney, who has a role in director Julie Taymor’s upcoming TEMPEST movie. Carney has a musical background, but is other wise little known. However, his Twitter page makes everything much clearer:

Hello! I am in a band called CARNEY and I love John Cena.

Works for us.

MAN WATCH: EW has a first look at Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman in the Broadway play ‘A Steady Rain’, which, we’re told, is a heavy duty drama about two Chicago cops.

Jackman, who won a Tony in 2004 for hoofing it as 1970s singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, plays Denny, a patrolman with a racist streak and violent temper. And Craig, a London stage veteran making his Broadway debut, plays Joey, a recovering alcoholic and gentler soul who may not be as docile as he first seems. In A Steady Rain, which just began rehearsals, the two buddies in blue recount a few harrowing days on the job and their very different accounts of a police call that quickly went south.

Well, that sounds just awesome, except, based on the VERY, VERY serious look in Jackman’s eye and Craig’s fierce porn ’stache, this play is really about two guys sitting around a steambath together. AND WE’D LOVE IT.

One of the events we were most sorry to miss while away was the workshop premiere of A CHECKROOM ROMANCE by cartoonist/storyteller Ben Katchor and musician Mark Mulcahy. The duo have collaborated on two previous theatrical pieces, which have won rave reviews. Well, we couldn’t do, but luckily, Brian Heaterfilled in with a post at the Daily Crosshatch:

The South Court auditorium is located underground—downstairs at the Stephen A. Schwarzman building, the recently renamed centralized headquarters for the New York Public Library famously guarded by two stoic stone lions. On Friday night the room was host to the second sold out night of A Checkroom Romance, a music-comedy—or, perhaps more appropriately a pop-music opera. It’s hard to figure out exactly what to call the performance, really, as it seemed to really exist in a class of its own—a stage show without precedent, really, save perhaps by the previous production of its creators, Julius Kniple artist Ben Katchor and former frontman of Miracle Legion (and later Pete & Pete houseband, Polaris) turned composer, Mark Mulcahy.

It sounds like quite an evening; we’re seeing more and more of this live slideshow/music/performance/cartoon crossover stuff as comics become more influential. If anyone knows how to do it, it’s Katchor, whose sense of humor and drama is sui generis.

Up until now, Hugh Jackman has been able to keep his love of musical theater and his love of slicing people with his claws separate, but don’t think those of us who share those twin loves haven’t fantasized about WOLVERINE: THE MUSICAL. Now, Erik Beck from Indy Mogul and Mark Douglas, from Barely Political, have made our dreams come true..sort of. If the SPIDER-MAN musical takes off, this one could really work, we think.

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We’ve devoted many items to the eventual Spider-Man musical, and we expect to devote more to it, because the damned thing doesn’t open for months and months. However, there’s one thing we haven’t linked to yet: what songwriter BONO THINKS OF SPIDER-MAN. Luckily, a fact-filled update from The Times UK, delivers the goods:

Bono has promised that the show will be “something the likes of which no-one has seen or heard”. He said the music will be part punk rock and part opera. “It should be a hallucinogenic experience for theatregoers,” he said. “You have the visual energy brings. The myth of the arachnid and the elasticity of these characters — you can turn theatre upside down.”

Oh, boy.

Or, if you prefer, Magneto and Professor X do Beckett.

According to a story on the BBC website, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart will be doing WAITING FOR GODOT next year.

McKellan will play Estragon and Stewart will play Vladimir.

Stewart is currently playing Claudius in the RSC production of Hamlet starring soon-to-be-ex Doctor # 10, David Tennant.

No word if Hugh Jackman might play Pozzo or Lucky.

Posted by Mark Coale