David S. Cohen has written a piece on the technical challenges of the Spider-Man musical on Broadway. These pieces worry a lot of folks on theater-related websites. It's kind of like, "What will become of the industry if audiences come to expect this kind of thing every time they go to the theater?" That strikes me as a needless worry. We've had spectacle on the stage before…granted, not on this scale but still mightily impressive. None of that ever diminished the audience for a good one-person show or two-person play.
And I should mention this: I've read a number of reports from folks who've seen Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Many of them, whether they like the show or not, say something like "Every nickel of that $65 million is on the stage." Well no, it isn't. A large chunk of that (reported) $65 million did not go for sets or costumes or special effects. It went for delays and postponements and legal wrangling. I'm sure what is on that stage did not come cheap though and it would be interesting to know what the production would have cost if all the elements had been pulled together to open according to the original schedule.