Where everybody knows your name...if your name is Stephen Sondheim. (Photo via Yelp)

The place is practically an institution, with Dexter Watson on the ivories and the occasional solo performance of a number from Jekyll and Hyde as interpreted by one of Marie’s roving bartenders. So color us surprised, then, when we got to the block and saw a chorus line of people waiting outside the venue. Was Kristin Chenoweth making a guest appearance at the literally underground musical hangout? Alan Cumming?

“They must have finally featured it on Glee ,” groaned The Village Voice’s Michael Musto, a patron of Marie’s for decades. “Or maybe it was that New York Times feature a while back.” (Or Smash, we might add, which does hold parties for the show at Marie's.)

Indeed, over the last couple months, the our-little-secret bar has become overrun by tourists, straight men demanding whiskey and women who don’t even know the words to “Suddenly Seymour.”

Joining us that night was BlackBook editor Tyler Coates, who noted the recent shift in Marie’s clientele. “Last time, wasn’t there that 40-something finance guy yelling at the bar about how he had met his wife here?” he asked us.

Oh yeah, and he kept demanding that they play something from The Little Mermaid.

What’s worse, Mr. Musto, practically a cultural institution himself, was turned away at the door by a snooty coat checker who asked him with not-so-saccharine sweetness to “please shut the door behind you on your way out.” Humiliated, our small group was made to stand in line with the civilians.

“I don’t know what this place is coming to when they don’t let you in,” a couple of stocky women said, gathering around Mr. Musto like butch mother hens, tongues clucking.

Although we were finally allowed to grace the place with our sonorous renditions of “Wouldn’t It Be Lovely” and “Steam Heat,” the same untoward element from recent outings populated the club that evening. Most of the bar was talking so loudly it drowned out the music. Three college-age women near the piano didn’t seem to realize what all this noise was and tried to yell callback lines at poor Dexter like they were at a Rocky Horror revival, while two young twinks at the bar sized each other up before one announced to his new friend, “By the way, I’m straight.”

“That’s so funny, I’m straight too!” The second man crowed. “In fact, I’m here with my co-worker, and she is totally gorgeous. You would love her.”

“Sorry,” said the first stud. “I’m here with my lady friend.”

While we generally don’t like to butt in on overheard conversations, the Transom had heard enough. “Are you two serious?” we demanded.

“Totally,” said the second guy, without missing a beat. “My co-worker is just a really, really beautiful lady.”

Look, we have nothing against straight guys, and some of our best friends still think that Chicago, Oklahoma and South Pacific are destinations, not musical theater. But even if you aren’t friends of Dorothy, please don’t pretend a sudden fugue state has made you forget the words to “Over the Rainbow.” There are other bars where you don’t have to sit around uncomfortably while your girlfriend cry-sings “I Dreamed a Dream.”

May we suggest Joshua Tree?

Via The Beacon School.

The Scene: A bunch of high schoolers, in a room full of their parents, teachers, and friends, performing a musical. In the musical, they play a bunch of teenagers not too unlike themselves.

And they are simulating masturbation, unprotected sex, abortion, teenage homosexuality, teenage lesbianism, group masturbation, masochism, child abuse, insubordination, and out-and-out total adolescent rebellion, all to the rapturous tune of musical numbers with titles like "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally Fucked."

Oh, if Tipper Gore could see them now.

So went the very first uncut high school production of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's adaptation of Spring Awakening, the unlikely 2007 musical that took Broadway by storm. The show won the Tony for Best Musical, but one problem persisted: Musicals' legacies are often defined by their ability to exist in places far from The Great White Way, especially high school drama programs. At a time when funding for the arts—let alone high school extra-curricular activities, and racy ones at that—are consistently being truncated, would the show go on? Let's face it: Oklahoma , this ain't.

But then again, neither is the Upper West Side, and six years after debuting on Broadway, The Beacon School—an "alternative public high school" right around the corner from Lincoln Center, which bills itself as focusing on "aesthetics, arts and technology"—proved itself about as far from Oklahoma as a high school theater program could be.

Granted, it may be only twenty or so blocks from the theater in which the Tony award-winning musical originally debuted on Broadway in 2006, but it's still a high school, and this is still—by all accounts—pretty racy content for teens. Except for the nudity (naturally), everything from the original production was intact. The premiere on Thursday received the reception one would expect: A student seated next to The Transom clasped her hands over her mouth when one character begged another—her crush, of course—to beat her from behind, after hiking up her skirt. A kiss between two boys and a teenager feverishly masturbating while trying to obscure it from his parents garnered waves of laughs. And you could've heard a pin drop during the first act closer, when the two leads consummated their teenage lust.

Despite the parents all having signed off on permission forms for their kids even to audition, a rehearsal and a staging are two entirely different matters. Come intermission, had the parents been sufficiently mortified?

Donna Fish, whose daughter Nicole played Wendela—the character who had just been deflowered not moments before—couldn't have been more proud.

"It's phenomenal," she raved. "I had taken my kids to see Spring Awakening when Nicole was in 8th Grade. She'd wanted to play that role ever since. We're pretty open with each other, so [the content] wasn't a big deal." It also rang true: "We just went through the college process, and it's interesting to watch the pressure on the kid [in the show] who's worried about failing out, and Nicole's anxiety about getting into school."

Kathleen Cullen, whose daughter Caitlin played Martha, explained that part of being a parent is empathizing with those anxieties. "To be honest, it's nothing we haven't ever been through before," she noted, "and wanted to talk about, and maybe haven't.

"I knew it was going to be in very good hands," she added. "I knew Jo Ann"—that's Jo Ann Cimato, the show's director and de facto producer—"would treat this with dignity. I pushed Caitlin to do this, but I'm not sure I'd do it with anybody else."

Ms. Cimato, who both the students and parents spoke of glowingly, held her students in high regard as well. "We're so grateful that they're so artistically aware and astute," she explained, "that it is like working with professionals." And they kids are indeed talented: The production was fiery, engaging, and lacking the cheesy artifice that makes most people cringe when they think back to their own high school's attempts at theater.

They are also undoubtedly mature. Ms. Fish's daughter has a line in her showbill biography about her desire for the other parents in the audience to go home and educated their children on the show's themes, "because if they don't, Rick Santorum will."

That said, Ms. Fish explained, "Nicole was more embarrassed for us to see [the sex scene] than we were to see it."

After the show finished, the giddy students told a different story.

Isabel Schnall, a senior on her way to Ms. Cimato's alma mater, Boston University, thought the parents were more embarrassed than the kids. She played Ilse, the outcast. "We know these things," she said with a laugh. "We're in high school. They're more scared of them."

"It's more embarrassing for them," agreed Brooke Shilling. "The whole show is about their job, as parents."

"They know the basics [of the show]," explained Zachary Kuskal—who played Moritz, one of the leads—of his parents, "but I don't think they're prepared for it."

And yes, despite the forthrightness of the parents The Transom encountered, some indeed had moments of discomfort, initially.

"I mean, my mom did, when she heard I was doing a masturbation scene," noted Kaya Simmons. "She was like, 'Ohhhhh, mygod.' But once I explained what was happening, I had her full support."

"Some of the parents wanted a little bit of an explanation, but most of them were happy to do it," recalled Ms. Shilling.

Everyone agreed on one thing: Their favorite number in the show: "Totally Fucked."

Ah, to be young again.

"The musical director and I, we leave rehearsal with them every day," Ms. Cimato noted. "They run away into the twilight, and we're both like, Thank God we're not sixteen anymore," she laughed.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Cast of 'Newsies' performing on 'The View'

Since we first saw Christian Bale prancing across dusty Manhattan streets belting "Santa Fe," we've held a torch in our heart for the 1992 Disney live-action flop Newsies. We don't even care the Roger Ebert once likened the film to "warmed-over Horatio Alger," since deep down we knew that one day, we'd have the chance to audition for a stage production of the show. (In our fantasy, we weren't Christian Bale/Jack Kelly's love interest, Sarah, because she was a goody-goody. We were always Ann-Margret's brassy saloon singer, Medda Larkson.)

Now our dreams are that much closer to coming true, as the New Jersey production of Newsies at the Paper Mill Theater has just announced the full line-up for its Broadway debut on March 15th.

Even better: the role of Jack Kelly, the brash, con-artist  "Cowboy" (think Sawyer from Lost, except younger, and with a terrible American accent and a love of theatrical dancing) will be reprised by Jeremy Jordan, who had left Newsies in September to star in the ill-fated Bonnie & Clyde. B&C closed last month after a brief run due to poor ticket sales.

Mr. Jordan might also be recognizable to non-theater-going audiences as Dolly Parton's grandson in the new Glee-meets-Sister Act 2 feature film, Joyful Noise.

Jeremy Jordan in Joyful Noise:

Christian Bale as Jack Kelly in the original Newsies:

The cast of Newsies performing on The View back in December:

Newsies–a (financial) bomb of a film the dealt with the sobering topic of 1922 youth-led Newsboy Strike by getting Christian Bale and Bill Pullman to prance around with half the cast of Nickelodeon's Roundhouse–can now be enjoyed two decades later in live theater form thanks to Disney not learning its lesson the first time.

According to lead actor Jeremy Jordan:

"Disney has invested a lot of money in this, and a lot of work has gone into this,” he said. "I think the audience is in for a lot of intense music, intense dancing and an exciting story. It’s an incredibly inspiring story, incredibly dramatic, but also fun and energetic."

Of course, Disney put a lot of money into Newsies twenty years ago with a budget of $15 million, and only made 1/5th of their investment back. Maybe the ace up Disney's sleeve for the New Jersey production is Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book for the show! Naturally. Why not Harvey Fierstein? That would just be weird. He won't be in it though. Boo!

The fact that Disney is trying to take away some of the "bad idea" thunder from Julie Taymor in no way dampens our enthusiasm for the show, though. As long as we're allowed to sing along quietly in our seats during such classics as "King of New York" and "Carrying the Banner," we wouldn't miss this for the world.

Rent.

Guitars  swelled during an early preview of the new revival of Rent, and the delighted crowd squealed. Across the orchestra section, fans accustomed to using the play’s soundtrack as karaoke fodder fought the urge to sing along. Many failed. The excitement was understandable. After three torturous Rent-free years, the city is once again graced by the play that made the East Village famous.

Gone is the original minimalist set, discarded for a labyrinth of fire escapes and metal grating meant to evoke the bad old days of 1991. Gone is the stunt, celebrity casting, which asked the world to imagine Scary Spice and Joey Fatone as starving bohemians. And gone is the 1,100-seat Nederlander Theatre. For the first time since its 1996 birth at the New York Theatre Workshop, Rent is off Broadway, where costs are low enough that, if producers and Rentheads have their way, its lights will never dim again.

It has taken up residence at New World Stages on 50th Street, a theatrical multiplex that has found a niche housing shows that, though no longer Broadway-viable, have enough brand recognition to keep a smaller theater full. Although technically a new production, this revival retains enough of the original creative team—including longtime director Michael Greif—to assure continuity with the original megahit. As the August 11 opening approaches, Mr. Greif and his team walk a tightrope, attempting to draw a fresh crowd without sacrificing the intensity of the show that first electrified New York a decade and a half ago.

Although Rent’s 2008 Broadway demise was cataclysmic for the die-hards who sustained the play during its epic, 12-year run, for producer Jeffrey Seller it was strictly business. “There’s only one reason any Broadway show closes,” he said. “We reached the point where our expenses exceeded our sales.” As the show wound down, “the audience kept getting younger and poorer,” forcing the producers to slash ticket prices until their profit margins evaporated.

“Am I gonna blame myself, that my show only ran 12 years?” he said. “Broadway is business. We do it to make money. We don’t do it to lose money. When we start losing money we close.”

Besides being cozier, the play’s new 499-seat digs are more affordable than a soaring Broadway house. A smaller crew, a star-free cast and the theatrical unions’ lower salary demands for Off Broadway have cut the show’s expenses by two-thirds. Instead of hustling to sell 6,000 tickets a week, Mr. Seller and his team will be able to get by with 3,000.

“We call it not Off Broadway, but intimate Broadway,” said Beverley MacKeen, executive director of Rent’s new home. She has struck a formula for profiting off of shows that conventional wisdom would consign to the dustbin. She had her first hit two years ago, when Avenue Q moved from Broadway to one of the five theaters in her former multiplex. By focusing on online ticket promotions instead of a conventional barrage of radio, print and television ads, she resuscitated a show that Broadway had pronounced dead. Avenue Q recouped its Off Broadway investment in a lightning-fast 13 weeks.

As a producer on Avenue Q, Mr. Seller knows that Ms. MacKeen’s formula works. He expects reviving Rent in her theater will be “equally easy, if not easier.”

“We did all the work branding it on Broadway,” he said.

Mr. Seller’s two productions will be joined by Million Dollar Quartet, the Tony-winning jukebox musical that finished its Broadway run in June and reopened at New World Stages last Thursday. Producer Gigi Pritzker is “thrilled to be in the same space as Rent.”

“Rent is a well-known brand,” she said. “The hope is that we can help each other.”

But for the creative team behind the revival, Rent is much more than a brand. For those who have been with the play since its inception, like Mr. Greif and Mr. Seller, any discussion of Rent is tied up in the memories of creator Jonathan Larson, whose shocking death the night before the New York Theatre Workshop premiere lent an air of melancholy to all the ensuing success.

“It’s always a mix of feelings,” said James C. Nicola, artistic director of the Workshop. Before the play’s original premiere, an extended Broadway run seemed like fantasy. If crowds took a shine to Mr. Larson’s rock-opera adaptation of La Bohème, the plan was to move it to a larger Off Broadway theater—something like New World Stages.

“The morning after the reviews came out,” said Mr. Nicola, “and we saw the apocalyptic scale of the response to it, it seemed obvious to me that we needed to be thinking bigger.”

Though Mr. Nicola felt the Broadway producers were “exceptional” in keeping the show from growing stale during its long run, he’s happy to see it back “in the scale of theater that we imagined for it originally.” That the Workshop still takes a piece of the box office is icing for the nonprofit.

“We always had a nice return on it all during the Broadway run,” he said. “It’s in some ways the best kind of income that we can get, because it’s the fruit of our labors.”

It can be strange to remember that, although the play’s audience is now heavily slanted toward teens, on first opening Rent was beloved by the most serious theatergoers in New York. Contemporary critics rhapsodized over the show’s rawness, a fact that might puzzle anyone who has heard the score performed by an enthusiastic 12-year-old. But the energy of the young cast, Mr. Larson’s carefree mixture of musical styles and his optimistic handling of grim subject matter—South Pacific it ain’t—were stunning enough at the time to win the show a Pulitzer.

The set designer, Mark Wedland, said Rent is more “musically and lyrically complex” than people realize. “You can come with a chip on your shoulder and say, ‘Entertain me if you dare!’ and then you may not hear everything that’s really there,” he said. “But people wouldn’t come back if they didn’t get something new each time.”

He finds the fan base “intimidating,” and the muted singing from the audience “unsettling,” but said the creative team had never worried about pleasing the die-hards. Those who have always loved Rent will come no matter what. Those who find it irritating will likely stay away. Success depends on those in between.

“I think we’re gonna be able to find 3,000 a week who still wanna see Rent,” said Mr. Seller.

It’s Mr. Greif’s job to make sure the new actors, most of whom were children when the play first opened, exploit their closeness to the crowd. Taking a break from rehearsals to chat in the lime-green chairs that line the lobby outside the theater, the director showed the natural energy with which he has sustained interest in this show for so long.

Mr. Greif has curly hair, a Santa Claus-esque twinkle in his eye, and no less love for Rent than when he first helped Mr. Larson hammer out the plot in the mid-1990s. After years visiting the theater once or twice a month to help new actors find their groove in what was by then a smoothly-running machine, he has found starting from scratch energizing.

“It’s unusual and wonderful and reminds me of times long ago when I was really in the thick of it,” he said. “There were things that I wanted to do differently over the years. Songs I wanted to reimagine. I wanted them to tell a different kind of story.”

The tweaks are slight. Even cutting three lines from a single song required consultation with Mr. Larson’s estate, and the only addition to the script has been to change the opening line—“December 24,”—to “December 24, 1991.” That and a few other changes, like the grungy, elaborate set and some video projections of East Village street scenes and commercials from the early ’90s, were necessary to conjure up a world that, when the play first opened, was right outside the New York Theatre Workshop’s door.

“Rent could have ironically been a gentrifying agent,” said Heidi Grumelot, the Artistic Director of the Horse Trade Theater Group on East Fourth Street. She praised the play, but lamented, “It would be really nice if there were as much interest in new plays and musicals that are as well written as Rent.”

Mr. Larson’s Alphabet City is long gone, and some of the problems he addressed have receded into the past. In an email, East Village chronicler E.V. Grieve imagined updating the story to reflect the modern concerns of the neighborhood’s young residents.

“Those lines!” he wrote. “Lines everywhere! Sunday brunch at Poco because they can’t get into Beauty & Essex. Saturday drink-and-down at the Sunburnt Cow! Luke’s Lobster on Thursday night! Lines for the food truck extravaganza at Governors Island! And why doesn’t Groupon have deals for places people actually want to go to?”

Parts of Rent are amusingly dated, like “La Vie Boheme,” the Act I finale whose praise for “yoga, yogurt” and “hand-crafted beers” seems to have predicted the St. Mark’s fro-yo infestation. Songs about the AIDS epidemic, on the other hand, are more grimly rooted in their time period.

“Now in some ways I feel there are a lot of people lulled into thinking that being H.I.V.-positive is like having cirrhosis,” said Mr. Nicola. “That you can just have a magic pill and you’re going to live your life forever. But there are people on the face of the planet for whom it is a death sentence, who are not living with AIDS but are dying with AIDS.”

Mr. Nicola wondered, whether Mr. Larson, were he writing today, would have felt the need to end the play with Mimi, dead from a combination of cold, heroin abuse and AIDS, miraculously returning to life. That happy ending was an attempt to provide positivity in a dark time. Now that AIDS is easier to overlook, Mr. Nicola speculated, the playwright may have preferred a more tragic ending.

In a future revival, produced by people who did not know Mr. Larson, Mimi might remain dead. Those producers might cut songs, discard the body mics and restrain the band, in an effort to make Rent a quieter, darker show. But for now, the play stays in the hands of those who first made a hit out of what Mr. Nicola called “an opera of life,” and this crew thinks that continuity—with a few careful changes—is the recipe for another long run.

During the early preview’s intermission, Rentheads milled in the lobby, dissecting the play that they know so well.

“They changed just enough,” gushed one. “But they left the rest the same.”

editorial@observer.com

Mr. Stoppard's 1993 masterwork--which opened last week in a fast-paced and elegant revival at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, directed by David Leveaux, who also directed a much-praised revival in London two years ago--tells two interweaving stories set at the same country house, one in 1809 and the other in the present, as modern-day academics try to unravel what happened there more than 200 years ago.

It's as packed with facts and ideas as any of Mr. Stoppard's works--his characters expound on English history, Newtonian physics, Lord Byron, iterated algorithms and entropy, among other things--but it's also, it seems to me, far more accessible than many of his other works. (The acclaimed Coast of Utopia exhausted me.) As the scenes alternate between 1809 and today, we watch the earlier story reveal itself just as the modern researchers discover it for themselves, allowing us to share in their anticipation and exaltation. Their curiosity becomes our curiosity; their satisfaction is ours, too.

But the pleasure of this play is not just in its ideas; it's in its boisterous humor and rich characters too. Mr. Stoppard has created a group of charming kooks, eccentrics both Victorian and modern, and Mr. Leveaux has assembled a generally excellent cast for it.

The biggest names are in the modern era: Billy Crudup plays Nightingale, a Bryon scholar, as an over-the-top caricature of a smug, self-impressed, preening academic; Raúl Esparza is Valentine, the aristocratic family's modern scion and a mathematician, and he's charmingly, knowingly self-involved. In 1809, Tom Riley is thoroughly engaging as the intelligent and ironic tutor Septimus.

But it's Lia Williams as Hannah, a gardening historian at the estate in modern times, who most dynamically conveys the thrills of uncovering new information and making connections. There are always limits to what we can know, Arcadia reminds us; we're each privy to just a snapshot of a chaotic universe that's headed toward destruction. (Those damned thermodynamics.) So what's the point of the whole exercise, and all this thinking? "It's wanting to know that makes us matter," Hannah says. "Otherwise we're going out the way we came in." And Mr. Stoppard wants us to want to know, whether we know we want to or not.

The production that opened at the Palace Theatre Sunday night is, to be very clear, Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical, and those last two words are always present, on the marquee, in Playbills and in the preshow turn-off-your-phones announcement, which also addresses theatergoers as "possums." This is not Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Restoration Comedy, the producers want to make clear, not Priscilla The Pinter Play nor even Priscilla A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. (Perhaps it is a little bit that last one, if the nation in question is Australia.)

Presumably this specificity in titling is a rights issue, because from the moment you walk into the cavernous Palace and see a neon map of Australia on the act curtain, a lunar disco ball hovering high overhead and a giant, Oldenburgian lipstick standing erect at the lip of the stage, there's little possibility of confusion. You wouldn't even mistake Priscilla The Musical for Priscilla The Movie, which was released in the summer of 1994 and told a sensitive story about a trio of drag queens asserting their identities and discovering their self-worth (and, yes, singing some campy songs) while on a trip across the Australian outback.

In the transition from screen to stage, and then from West End stage to Broadway stage, Priscilla has lost most of that sensitivity while receiving an additional camp injection of such purity and dosage it could nearly resuscitate the Continental Baths. (It's surely no coincidence that first among the 22 listed producers is the Divine Miss Midler.)

What's playing at the Palace is a high-volume, high-energy, never-let-up disco-drag spectacular with a pulsing soundtrack full of Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and Madonna. Its (not particularly complex) source material has been dumbed down into a simple jukebox musical--and it's perhaps the best jukebox musical I've seen.

Stephan Elliott, who wrote and directed the film, and Allan Scott wrote the script, which wisely wastes little time on dialogue and book scenes--they seem to stop this show cold--and instead moves briskly from one-liner to production number. Director Simon Phillips, an Australian who's directed the play since its first production, in Sydney, puts on a perfect spectacle, lush and funny. (The veteran Broadway choreographer Jerry Mitchell is listed as "production supervisor.")

The cast--led by Will Swenson, Nick Adams and the Australian Tony Sheldon--is energetic, and hugely entertaining. And the choreography, by Ross Coleman, an Australian who died two years ago, is a delight: sexy, stylized and knowingly silly drag moves writ large.

But most wonderful here are the production design by Brian Thomson and the marvelous costumes by Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner. Mr. Adams' big number--"Sempre Libre," from La Traviata--is sung from an enormous closed-toe pump extended over the audience from atop a bus. (On today's Broadway, one is tempted to call such staging simple.) There are dancing paintbrushes in "Color My World," silvery cowboy ensembles for "Go West" and a hilariously exuberant funeral scene set to "Don't Leave Me This Way," in which the dancing mourners wear hats topped variously with a cross, a crown, a menorah and a stiletto heel.

This Priscilla still follows that same mismatched gaggle of Sydney gays: nice-guy Tick (Hair's Mr. Swenson, who delivers a "MacArthur Park" with more enthusiasm than even Ms. Summer ever did); young, pretty and selfish Adam (Mr. Adams, who shows off his torso as much as I would if I'd never eaten a carbohydrate); and an older, lonely, raspily elegant transsexual called Bernadette (Mr. Sheldon, consistently off-key but otherwise excellent in the only role with any emotional depth), who brings to mind Lauren Bacall but less mannish.

They're traveling--by means of a Queer Eye'd old motorcoach, the eponymous Priscilla--to middle-of-nowhere Alice Springs, where Tick's wife (when and how they married, and why they never divorced, is not explained) books acts at a casino, and his son, whom he has never seen, wants to meet him. Ultimately, Tick and Benji connect (to "Always on My Mind"), Bernadette finds love, Adam stops being an ass and the Middle American-style Middle Australians love the drag show (to "We Belong").

The cowriter Mr. Scott suggested in a New York Times article that grown men--heterosexual men!--have been known to tear up at that father-and-son reunion, which, if true, could only be because a bit of glitter got stuck someplace uncomfortable. But so what if there's little real emotion here? With Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical, like on Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Bus, the journey is what matters, and it's a blast.

editorial@observer.com

Perhaps not! Today the producers of the most expensive show in Broadway history announced that the much-afflicted musical will not in fact open on its already-late February 7 start date. It will open March 15, so they claim. Hold your breath at your peril.

Let's pick out the best parts of this face-saving press release.

Director Julie Taymor, on the delay:

We are so grateful for the enthusiastic audiences who have been coming to see SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark and we are dedicated to giving them the very best show we can.

Producer Michael Cohl, on the delay:

We simply need more time to fully execute the creative team’s vision before freezing the show. I picked a date in March that allows me to ensure that this will be the final postponement.

Arbiters for world peace Bono and The Edge, on the delay:

Working on this show has been one of the great thrills of our lives, we’ll continue working as long as they let us. We are looking for the extraordinary here and we are nearly there.

The Observer, on the delay: there's a good chance they'll be another one.

Click for What Twitter Taught Us: Piers Morgan Defends A Cell-Abusing Arianna

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Bridges rise;

Roads blast through;

Parks blossom:

Triborough, Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Verrazano;

Northern State, Southern State, Saw Mill, Henry Hudson;

Jones Beach, Riverside Park.

To be sure, the musical is considerably less comprehensive than Mr. Caro's 1,286-page 1974 book, "The Power Broker," which follows Moses' career as city parks commissioner and chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. "Robert Moses Astride New York" moves through major chapters of history in just a few stanzas, and the piece to be performed Saturday is only a sampling of what the composer, Gary Fagin, ultimately hopes will become a full-fledged production featuring additional characters like the neighborhood activist Jane Jacobs and Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia.

There was some editing, though, as Fagin apparently took a line from Moses literally and wrote the lyric, "Childless women howling about your nonexistent children." Caro, who has no direct involvement with the project, protested that it came off as true. Fagin demured: "He was absolutely right."

So the old saying still goes--everyone's a critic! To decide for yourself, there is, for now, a one-night performance, which is free and scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday in the World Financial Center's Winter Garden.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Not surprisingly, many are calling for the show's cancellation, including several Broadway performer peers. The New York Post has a roundup of tweets and Facebook updates that direct ire toward Taymor and those keeping the show going.

Alice Ripley, of Next to Normal, fired some serious shots on Twitter yesterday.

SPIDERMAN SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF ITSELF. THIIS [sic] IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE AND EMBARRASSING TO WORKING ACTORS EVERYWHERE.

DOES SOMEONE HAVE TO DIE? WHERE IS THE LINE FOR THE DECISION MAKERS, I AM CURIOUS.

Alice! Your caps lock is on!

Adam Pascal -- who can ride out being in the original cast of Rent for the rest of his career -- clarified that "his anger is real" after posting this on his Facebook:

They should put Julie Taymor in Jail for assault! I know what its [sic] like to fall and get hurt in front of 2000 people. It's no fun, but at least it was the one time it happened. I hope whoever was hurt is ok and sues the shit out of Julie, Bono, Edge and every other asshole who invested in that steaming pile of actor crippling shit!

With the show apparently soldiering ahead despite the accidents, we can probably expect more belligerence aired to the masses through social networking platforms. Make it stop, Julie, and just pull the plug.

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

Click for Scandal Report: And Then The Model At Diddy's Party Burst Into Flames

Now, the ambitious musical -- directed by Julie Taymor and featuring music by Bono and The Edge -- has seen its third serious injury since production began. The New York Post reported that Natalie Mendoza, who plays the villianess Arachne, has bowed out after suffering a head injury. Previously, an aerialist broke both wrists and another actor broke a foot.

A silver lining of all this is that Mendoza's replacement, America Olivo, has appeared on the cover of Playboy. Or perhaps that's just another sign of desperation. Either way, if the curtains ever open on this thing, that's just another reason to be curious.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234