Jennifer Damiano and Patrick Page Join Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark; Opening Night Set

The long-awaited Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will arrive on Broadway just in time for Christmas, with Jennifer Damiano and Patrick Page joining previously announced title star Reeve Carney in Julie Taymor's big-budget musical. The show is set to begin previews on November 14 and open on December 21 at the newly renamed Foxwoods Theatre.

As previously speculated, Damiano, a Tony nominee for Next to Normal and vet of Spring Awakening, has been cast as Peter Parker's love interest, Mary Jane Watson. Page, who has played larger-than-life characters on Broadway in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Lion King, A Man for All Seasons and Beauty and the Beast, has been tapped to play the villainous Green Goblin/Norman Osborn.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark features music and lyrics by Grammy winners Bono and The Edge of U2 and a book by Taymor and Glen Berger.

Drawing from more than 40 years of Marvel comic books for inspiration, Spider-Man spins a new take on the mythic tale of Peter Parker, a teenager whose unremarkable life in Queens is turned upside-down—literally—when he’s bitten by a genetically-altered spider and wakes up the next morning clinging to the ceiling. Bullied by his classmates and tortured by a crush on next-door-neighbor Mary Jane Watson, this science geek discovers he has suddenly been endowed with astonishing powers. He soon learns, however, that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Maligned by the media, buffeted by financial woes and stretched thin by the expectations of the world-at-large, Peter must struggle to navigate the perilous and peculiar demands of being a web-slinging superhero.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is being produced on Broadway by Michael Cohl, Jeremiah J. Harris, Hello Entertainment/ David Garfinkle, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Land Line Productions, by association with Marvel Entertainment.

The casting and opening night news release also included a sketch rendering of designer George Tsypin's design of Oscorp Labs, the laboratory of scientist Norman Osborn (shown below).