SPIDER CENTS: That unspecific tingling feeling isn’t your foot going to sleep but rather your arachnoid sixth sense alerting you that yet another Spider-Man spinoff is headed this way. Already this year the Spidey franchise has launched a major motion picture, licensed animated-series rights to MTV, and sponsored a vehicle in NASCAR. Now it’s following all that up with something that sounds like a WWE pay-per-view event. Spider-Man Live! is billed as "a thrilling stunt spectacular . . . [that] brings together an extraordinary pool of international talent from the worlds of Broadway, the circus, ice spectaculars, and theme-park entertainment." It opens at the Wang Theatre on November 5 and runs through November 10. Tickets are $17 to $37; call (800) 447-7400.
MONSTER JAM: Halloween and hip-hop have been united in the collective imagination since at least Whodini’s "Haunted House of Rock," but in Boston the connection gets made every year with Jam’n 94.5’s "Monster Jam" at the FleetCenter. This year is no exception, as hip-hop’s ruling class throw down on the same stage. Sean Combs (apparently we’re back to calling him Puffy, with the New Yorker reporting that his name change to "P-Diddy" was "a joke"), Jay-Z, Ludacris, Eve, and Nappy Roots are on the bill for a 6 p.m. gig on October 27. Tickets are $55 to $94; call (617) 931-2000.
NEXT WEEKEND:
Musical Marty
You’d have to look hard to recognize a big-time movie star in John C. Reilly, who’s in town to rehearse the title role in Marty, the new musical that’s being given its world premiere by the Huntington Theatre Company beginning October 18. Based on Paddy Chayefsky’s beloved 1953 television play the subsequent Oscar-winning 1955 film, the new show sports music by Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye, Bye Birdie, and Golden Boy), lyrics by Lee Adams (Birdie and Golden Boy), and book by Rupert Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood).
Reilly walks into Betty’s Wok and Noodle to meet this reporter dressed in an unpressed flannel shirt hanging beneath a windbreaker that looks as if it had shrunk in the wash. He has no pretensions, despite a string of films that includes the current The Good Girl and two due out at Christmas, Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and the musical version of Chicago. "I never got involved with acting because I wanted to be famous or rich. It’s what I thought I did best. I don’t believe in showing up at premieres to get my picture taken. I’m an actor. It’s a job like other jobs."
This particular actor is a medium-tall man with a son-of-the-Irish face framed by leprechaun-curly hair. His straight-speak was honed by a southwest-side Chicago parochial-school education and finished off by four years at the city’s famed Goodman School of Drama. He started taking drama lessons at a class sponsored by the Chicago Park District when he was eight years old, then went on to star in musicals at his high school. "The circle is really coming back around — I’m doing what I was doing when I was a kid."
Now 37, Reilly had to move to Los Angeles and make it in films before he could snare a chance at Broadway stardom. He first tried New York in his mid 20s, after he’d scored a few film roles, "but no one was interested." He returned to LA and made more films, including Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and The Perfect Storm. Then Broadway called with last season’s staging of Sam Shepard’s True West, in which he and Philip Seymour Hoffman alternated in the roles of the two brothers, each winning a Tony nomination. Now that he has Marty, Broadway may be beckoning again. "If it goes well here, we have a tentative agreement to take the show to New York in the fall of 2003."
For those too young to remember Ernest Borgnine’s Oscar-winning turn as the hapless Bronx butcher who can’t find a girl to dance with, let alone marry, the success of a love story about two ordinary lonely people might be hard to imagine. Chayefsky wrote for the old Goodyear TV Playhouse, which held its rehearsals in a midtown New York ballroom. The legend has it that after spotting a sign on the wall that said, "Ladies, please dance with the men who ask you. Remember, men have feelings too," he came up with an idea for a story about a man who is repeatedly turned down by the girls. He wrote the script for Marty in four days; the Goodyear production aired on May 24, 1953, with Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand. The film followed two years later.
"It was a huge sensation," Reilly says. "He wanted to write a story about real people. He was reacting to the glamor system of Hollywood — which, unfortunately, hasn’t changed all that much. He wanted to show everyday people and what’s really going on. Not everyone looks like Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.
"I’m proud to be picking up this story again. I feel I’m one of those actors who plays guys like that, who people can relate to. Some people make a job out of being a celebrity. I’d much rather hide behind a character."
Marty is presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Avenue, October 18 through November 24. Tickets are $12 to $67; call (617) 266-0800.
BY IRIS FANGER
