If the reviews from Preview Night are any indication, maybe Spiderman should have left the dark on.

The New York Times was at the Preview Night for the Broadway musical Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, Sunday night. Let’s just say you shouldn’t hold your breath.

Keep in mind that it had the largest budget of any Broadway musical (at nearly $65 million) and ample time to prepare (the release was pushed back twice, with the new date nearly a year after the first). What it boiled down to was, essentially, a series of badly written scenes punctuated by a series of long pauses due to technical difficulties (including actors getting stuck in flight harnesses) and actors improvising forgotten lines (yeah, I’m talking about you Green Goblin).

The whole things sounds like a total disaster and fan reviews weren’t much better. My favorite was from a children’s acting coach who felt the show had too many fundamental issues to correct. The highlight of the night may have actually been that there were no injuries. Yep…

The show doesn’t officially open until January 11th, 2011 which will, hopefully, give them enough time to work out the technical issues. The story, however, is as good as it’s gonna get.

I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t exactly have me amped for the newly announced Batman Live theatrical Arena Tour hitting stateside in 2012. But then again, when were singing, dancing, theater-bound superheros ever a good idea?