

Last week Spider-Man: The Neverending Story Turn Off the Dark refrained from opening on the Ides of March as planned (blah blah blah new creative team blah blah blah). But luckily for theatergoers the two smaller, totally unauthorized, Spider-Man productions aiming to open made their debuts without a hitch. And, for those of you playing along at home one of them, the Spidey Project, has already made its way online.

While we missed the other Spider-man project (that'd be Spidermann) we did manage to slip into one of the two sold-out performances of The Spidey Project and were more than pleasantly surprised (ok, sold out is a slight misnomer since the tickets were free). With a shoestring budget—$0, they say—the team behind Spidey managed to put together a coherent, original and entertaining take on the Spider-Man origin story that, while taking liberties, somehow managed to be truer to the source material than the behemoth currently blundering down Broadway (in our humble opinion). Its much campier and less emo than the Bono version and instead of flying over your heads on wires Spider-Man simply stands still while buildings fly around him...but what can we say, we're suckers for cheap theater tricks. Also, there is a song about Chipotle in it.

So to be clear: This isn't a slick multi-million dollar musical, but it is a good, silly time. You almost hope the producers on Broadway are watching. But don't take our word for it, watch (and wish the sound was better mixed) for yourself:

And here's the program