The Spider-Man musical on Broadway has postponed its official opening from January 11 to February 7. Some of you are probably wondering what difference that makes, given that the show will continue to play to audiences every night as planned.
What it means is that they're declaring, "We're still changing major stuff. Don't review us yet!" They can do this because they're selling well in previews. Last week, for instance, they were at 99.4% capacity. Can't do much better than that. Ordinarily, a show that went through extended previews in New York would be suspect. Theatergoers would say, "They're postponing the reviews because they know they're gonna get murdered and they're trying to sell tickets before that happens." Or maybe some of them would say, "They're delaying because they're still trying desperately to fix the thing."
In the case of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, they apparently are planning to make some significant changes to the show — new dialogue, at least one new song, a new ending, etc. If this was a "regular" Broadway show without the hype about the budget and publicity about tech problems, this new delay might be fatal. It would trigger the above quotes and more. As it is, I don't think it'll matter. People have heard so much about this show, they want to see it. I don't think it'll matter a lot what the critics say about it, either. (The Addams Family, which did not get good reviews, is still running at 70-80% capacity, which ain't bad after ten months. Its producers are apparently so confident about it that they're not expecting to close when Nathan Lane leaves in a few months. They've already announced his replacement.)
Articles speculate that Spider-Man is going to have to take in a million bucks a week in order to run. The change of opening date might make some think they're worried they're not going to be able to achieve that with what they currently have. Maybe. But maybe they just figure that with audiences flocking to previews, they have the luxury of enough time to make things better.