Fans can’t get enough ‘Spider-Man’

By MARK KENNEDY

AP Drama Writer

NEW YORK

Christine Antosca is something of a hero to the folks behind “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”

The 28-year-old New Yorker and Starbucks barista really liked the musical when she first saw it in May. In fact, she adored it: She has now seen it 46 times — and counting. “It draws me back every single week I see it,” she says.

How many more times does Antosca plan to see the show? Her answer will put a smile on the faces of producers as they seek to earn back their $75 million investment. “My goal is to keep going as long as the play is still around,” she says.

Superfans such as Antosca, who regularly tweets about the show and discusses ticket promotions on Facebook, have helped keep alive Broadway’s most expensive show, which this week celebrates the one-year anniversary of its first preview. Who expected that endurance last winter?

Repeat customers and celebrity fans that spread the word — a group that includes political commentator Glenn Beck and actress Poppy Montgomery — are one reason Spider-Man still flies at the Foxwoods Theatre.

“I’m a huge fan of boldness. I am a huge fan of people thinking outside of the box. I am a huge fan of stories of triumph and reaching in and finding more than you even think you have inside of you. This has all of those elements,” says Beck, who estimates that he’s seen the show about a dozen times, even though he’s not a huge fan of its composers, U2’s Bono and The Edge.

Though box-office numbers have softened somewhat over the past few months, the show is hitting the holiday season on a high, offering one of the few Broadway shows geared for the whole family. It set a new box- office record for the 1,930-seat theater by grossing $2,070,000 for the week ending Sunday.

Producers say it has been seen by more than 600,000 people over the past year, but Montgomery and her son may skew those numbers. At Sunday’s matinee, where the first-year anniversary was celebrated with the on stage presentation of a 7-foot cake in the shape of the Chrysler Building, the actress was again catching the show with 31/2-year-old son Jackson. They’ve seen “Spider-Man” 13 times.

Virtually every Broadway show has hard-core fans: The wonderfully campy roller-skating musical “Xanadu” birthed so-called “Fanadus,” “Rent” was known for its “Rent-heads,” “Wicked” has its girl groupies and even “Next to Normal” — a musical about bipolar disorder — had repeaters. What makes “Spider-Man” unusual is fans’ loyalty despite the high level of turbulence behind the scenes.

One man has seen it at least 53 times and four women have attended 30 shows each, says Michael Cohl, one of the lead producers, who thinks there might be one patron who has seen it over 100 times.

“I love the superfans,” he says. “I think they’re incredible. They see things in the show that I don’t even see. There’s a certain enthusiasm for life that a lot of us lose and I see it in those people every time I run into them.”

It’s an enthusiasm I wish I had all the time.”

Ticket buyers have kept coming, even though cast-members were being injured. They ignored the six delays in opening night and the record-breaking preview period with high ticket prices. They continued even though there had been loud complaints about the muddled plot and theater critics trashed it.

The fans even kept entering the Foxwoods Theatre doors following a shake-up that led to the firing of Julie Taymor, the co-book writer and director, who has now sued her former employers over copyright issues. They lined up although the show quickly became a punch-line for late-night comics