Struggling with the thought of parting with $152 just to see Tony-nominated (and now NY Drama Critics Circle honored) Broadway savior, The Book of Mormon? Maybe you should check out the original cast recording and then decide. NPR has posted the entire, filthy thing on their website for your listening pleasure. It's absolutely free! Hallelujah. [NPR via Daily What]

Chorus boy-hobbling megamusical/bottomless comedy font Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark is back from a months-long hiatus, and great news: It's fully retooled!

Cute and cantankerous Broadway writer/director Arthur Laurents has died at 93. A demigod among showtune fans, he's best known for the books to West Side Story and Gypsy, and directing several of their revivals. RIP Arthur. Heaven's Gypsy awaits. [Deadline]

Filmmaker Adam Abada rode the entire length of Broadway on Tuesday afternoon and shot every intersecting street sign on his journey. If you ever got dizzy making a trip uptown, try this one on for size. The bonus is that it takes less than a minute. We wish the A train was that fast. [NYT]

I can't believe the news today: Turn Off the Dark, the Spider-Man musical, has injured yet another one of its actors. I can't close my eyes and make it go away! T.V. Carpio, who replaced the concussed Natalie Mendoza as the supervillain "Arachne," was hurt last week and will be sidelined from production for two weeks. Hers is the fifth reported injury, forcing us to ask: How long? How long must we sing this song? How long? How long? [AP]

Producers of the problem-plagued musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark fired director Julie Taymor, and now it looks like her collaborator, choreographer Daniel Ezralow, is getting sacked, too.

Not only is director Julie Taymor supposedly leaving Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, but the whole production plans to shut down for a few weeks. Yikes! An unmitigated, unprecedented (no show in Broadway history has ever run this many preview performances) disaster. Well, only creatively for now, but one would think the finances will eventually suffer. That said, is there any knowledge to be gained from this whole mess? Yes, a few things!

Citing unnamed "sources," NY1 reports that director Julie Taymor is leaving the troubled Spider-man musical Turn Off the Dark. The news comes a day after The New York Times wrote about ongoing "negotiations" between Taymor and the musical's producers, including U2 members Bono and the Edge, who wrote the musical's songs.

Uh-oh: Someone seems to have told Bono that his Spider-man musical sucks. And now, according to The New York Times, the U2 frontman has "taken a direct role" in talks with director Julie Taymor over the possibility of her exit.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the forever-delayed, utterly doomed musical from Julie Taymor, Bono and the Edge, is still in previews. But that doesn't mean that the cast can't perform a weirdly tame song on David Letterman's Late Show!

In what could be viewed as a vote of no confidence in director/creator Julie Taymor's ability to fix Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the producers of the creatively flailing Broadway musical (which is certainly not financially flailing) are bringing in a co-director to gently tap Taymor on the shoulder and send her back to the dugout for a bit.

The Spider-Man crew can breathe a sigh of relief. It seems they're not the only Broadway folks putting people's lives and limbs at risk every time they raise the curtain. Two Kansas City natives are suing the producers of the Broadway musical Billy Elliot, claiming that, while watching the show from the front row, they were both hit by an errant prop and were subsequently hospitalized. They are each suing for $2 million, or roughly two Broadway tickets' worth. (Broadway shows are expensive!) The producers have not yet issued a statement about the lawsuit.

Unable to fix their show's many, many flaws on their own, the Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark production team is turning to focus groups of strangers to help point out weaknesses in their troubled Broadway musical. From Entertainment Weekly:

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the $65 million Broadway musical from Lion King director Julie Taymor and Bono, of the Irish Bonos, was supposed to open on Monday night. It didn't—it's been delayed, again, till March 15—but that didn't stop a bunch of critics from reviewing it anyway. And they all agree: It's unbelievably bad.

He's gonna do it. Maybe quickly, maybe slowly. Depends how he feels. But watch out, he's coming. Also today: lots of news about television, casting and pilots and stuff, as well as an update on that Will Smith Annie thing.

Up until now, a curtain dropped abruptly and that was it. Now the trouble-plagued Turn Off the Dark is getting a real ending: more flying! That's smart, having one last chance to get an accident in before everyone goes home.

No, you won't be having another of your Anderson Cooper-as-God fantasies when you go see How to Succeed in Business... on Broadway this spring and hear the silver fox's voice. The CNN anchor is providing the show's prerecorded narration.

The Spider-Man musical Turn Off the Dark, which has a nasty habit of seriously injuring its cast members, was the highest-grossing show on Broadway last week, beating out Wicked. Sounds like Wicked needs to start dropping its actors off buildings!

Clearly a dark agent of Julie Taymor and company, Chris Tierney — the performer who plummeted thirty feet during a performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, sparking an outcry against the show — says it's allll good. Game on!

Tonight, Stephen Colbert gave a "Tip of [His] Hat" to the doomed Spider-Man broadway musical for, well, selling tons of tickets even though its actors keep getting injured. Then, Colbert called on other plays to violently follow suit. Watch inside.