• NPR , Wednesday, February 9, 2011 9:31 AM

Critics, tired of waiting for the official opening of the oft-delayed combination musical and extreme sporting event, went ahead and hit the stands with their reviews yesterday, and they weren't kind. Ben Brantley at the New York Times said the musical is not only one of the most expensive ever, but the worst.

Mark Blankenship writes that the Spider Man story -- not the one Julie Taymor is at pains to tell on the Broadway stage, but the one about the disastrous production -- is, like so many other disaster scenes, about public rubber-necking. "The real story here," he writes, "is that our apparent hunger for something to be obsessed with, for something to pick apart, is turning the discussion into a shrill and vicious harangue."

Still, the producers might be hoping that people don't look at that $170 ticket price and wonder if it wouldn't perhaps make more sense to just buy a U2 album, throw it on an iPod, and go watch people bungee jump.

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