By the time Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark officially opened on June 14, 2011,[3] it had set the record for the longest preview period in Broadway history, with 182 performances.

Julie Taymor contested reports of the budget on the BBC Radio 4 program This Cultural Life claiming that the production cost was overstated and instead comparable to the Shrek musical.

[12] Bono, admitting that his description is a little "pretentious", referred to it as "pop-up, pop-art opera", and said that the director, Julie Taymor, called it a "rock-and-roll circus drama".

[1] The production also includes a "multitude of moving set pieces that put the audience in the middle of the action," and enough projections onto giant screens that Bono has said that it is like a three-dimensional graphic novel.

In the rewritten version, the plot hews closer to the comic book and film and trims and transforms the role of Arachne into a "kindred spirit in Spider-Man's dreams".

The opening night cast featured Reeve Carney as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Jennifer Damiano as Mary Jane Watson, Patrick Page as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin, T.V.

Carpio as Arachne, Michael Mulheren as J. Jonah Jameson, Ken Marks as Uncle Ben, Isabel Keating as Aunt May, Jeb Brown as Mary Jane's Father, Matt Caplan as school bully Flash Thompson, and Laura Beth Wells as Osborn's wife Emily.

[26][27] On November 19, 2013, producers announced that the show would close on January 4, 2014, citing falling ticket sales[28] and no longer being able to get injury insurance for the production as reasons for closure.

[28] In 2012, the musical's producers confirmed that they were scouting theatres in Europe, after The New York Post reported that they were considering productions in arenas in London and Hamburg.

Peter soon becomes aware that, as a result of the spider's bite, he has spider-like powers along with a muscular physique, 20/20 vision and the ability to emit web strings from his wrists.

Meanwhile, Norman Osborn begins thinking that Spider-Man stole his research as the military organization Viper Worldwide presses him to accelerate his project ("Pull the Trigger").

The Green Goblin sits at a piano at the top of the Chrysler Building and boasts to the audience of his plan to destroy New York City ("I'll Take Manhattan").

[39] Patrick Healy in The New York Times described their situation: Others might have abandoned the project, but the Spider-Man team decided to go on, with Mr. Adams's partner, David Garfinkle, as lead producer.

[48] A new opening night of December 21, 2010 was scheduled, but this was delayed until January 2011, reportedly due to "a tremendous amount of creative commotion behind the scenes" as more time for rehearsals was needed.

[49] In December 2010, the official opening was again pushed back, to February 2011, "to provide more time for the creators to stage a new final number, make further rewrites to the dialogue and consider adding and cutting scenes and perhaps inserting new music.

"[65] In early March 2011, Playbill and The New York Times reported that the producers had considered whether to "work with an expanded creative team" or have Taymor leave the production.

[22][23] [Joan Rivers] was there backstage to develop more material for her stand-up act, which lately has begun with a moment of silence for 'those Americans risking their lives daily – in 'Spider-Man' the musical'.

[74] In that December 20 preview, Tierney fell 21 feet (6.4 m) off a piece of scenery when his harness was not connected to the safety cord, leaving him to freefall through the stage and into the orchestra pit.

[83] On August 15, 2013, actor Daniel Curry (who was playing a villain, and was also a Spider-Man stunt double) was hurt by apparently being pinned under a piece of equipment and suffered leg trauma.

[85][86] Carney, Bono, and the Edge all performed on the May 25, 2011, final episode of American Idol Season 10 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, singing "Rise Above".

He praised the stunts and ballads "that evoke the yearning grandeur of U2 – though their more upbeat material tended to be nondescript" but felt that the "plot of the second act twisted into tangled knots.

Bono and the Edge's score is almost universally panned while Patrick Page's Green Goblin and stunning visuals remain for most critics the best reasons to see the show.

[102] The New York Times' Patrick Healy stated in February 2011 that Spider-Man had become "a national object of pop culture fascination—more so, perhaps, than any show in Broadway history" due to media coverage and late-night comedians' monologues on the musical's many delays, injuries, and creative issues.

[67] The New York Post columnist Michael Riedel opined that month that the musical would be short-lived: "Depending on how much more money its backers are willing to lose, my hunch is that 'Spider-Man' will stagger through the spring, pick up with the tourist traffic in the summer and then collapse in the fall.

In November, its producers stated that the show earned about $100,000 to $300,000 in net income each week, which means that Spider-Man would have had to continue playing for at least five years to recoup the $75 million cost.

[31] The show eventually closed at a "monumental financial loss"[106] with John Kenrick noting that "Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark sold tickets, but rarely covered its ponderous weekly running cost.

[118][119][120] Swiss Miss, an original character created by Taymor and Berger for the show's Sinister Six, makes a brief visual cameo in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as a prisoner in Spider-Society' headquarters.

Jon Dolan for Rolling Stone gave the album a three stars rating out of five commenting: "Amid the all many disasters that beset the Broadway version of Spider-Man, Bono and the Edge's songs emerge pretty much unscathed by critics.

But show tunes need big voices too, and, singing next to Bono on this version from the forthcoming cast recording album, leading man Reeve Carney sounds like a nervous understudy.

Erlewine summed up his review calling the songs a "murky, turgid mess, too concerned with atmosphere and narrative to reel in a listener and ironically not offering ambience or story enough to suggest that the musical would entertain.