Bad for the Arts?

Well, Spiderman the National joke is now in its umpteenth very public revision, but with a huge catch this time: the director / co-writer is (all but) out, while the musical team finally gets off its collective ass to work on the damn thing as new writer(s) and a new director have been rushed in to save the day (and this irony is not lost on too many people.)     Will it help?    Who knows?    History would suggest "No."     For my purposes, it won't matter.      I doubt I would be interested in seeing it anyway, certainly not at those prices.    My interest lies in the humiliated director, Julie Taymor.    If mid-America did not know she was the creative genius behind The Lion King, her infamy is now front page news (or at least, of the Arts section.)     Yes, she refused to admit vast problems were not being solved.   Yes, she had some poor ideas no one could (or would?) talk her out of.     No, even in a fantasy world, a chorus of spiders can NEVER be made to work.     She seemed destined to go down in flames--and destiny finally caught up with her.     She is now considered a foolish egomaniac that destroyed the great work that could have been Spiderman.     Never mind, she was not working in a vacuum.    Others were designing sets (with her input), costumes (ditto), flying stunts, etc.   Not to mention, writing the score.   Was she really such a control freak that she FORCED them all to bow to her foolish whims?    I have begun to doubt it.     The world needed an excuse why Bono could not be the next Elton John.    They needed a quick and handy scapegoat.   They found a large one, one they would have us believe was trapped in a web completely of her own devising.     Well, she was the director but the buck did not stop with her: it stopped with the producers.  They were not pushing for new songs, better scripts, more coherent plot lines.    Unless they were doing it without ANYONE saying anything about it.     With this much scrutiny?    Get real.   They gave the woman more than enough rope to hang herself (and half the cast while she was at it.)     And sat on their hands while Bono and The Edge went on tour and ignored what was happening in New York.      And no one likes their score any more than they like the script.    So why are they not "fired'?     Have they not failed as well?    Yes, they have.    But someone with some name recognition had to stay around or the show would close, losing $65, 000, 000.     So a ready made villain was found and banished.  

So where does this leave us?    With someone with imagination, vision, courage, intelligence, and faith thrown to the wolves and disgraced.     And the theater world will be a poorer place for it.     I have no doubt she created her own downfall, but the spite and hate and arrogance of the "critics" was hardly unbiased.    Would this have happened if a man had done the same, as some have claimed?    Who knows that either?     The chances are, the show would never have gotten as far as it has with someone else attached.     And she made a HUGE mistake.     And now the thud that is the biggest musical disaster in history will echo down her career even past her death.     Frankly, had none of this "drama" happened, the show would have closed months ago.    In an ironic twist, the show is mostly full every night with audience members wanting to experience "one of the worst (musicals ever)" as Ben Brantley so pithily opined.     This press had allowed time to make changes.     So change it!     Maybe the new people can take the basic ideas and salvage them.   But let's not be too quick to chop off Taymor's head.     Her creativity is good for theater, good for opera, good for the Arts, period.    But who will ever trust her again?     In the world of live performance, nothing is written in stone.    But I predict her time of influence is over.    And THAT, more than any one show, no matter how big a failure, is the real disgrace.     We do not have enough imaginative people working on Broadway or in opera houses these days.    And now we have one fewer.