The odyssey of the much-beleaguered Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” can only be described as tragi-comic: The delays and injuries have been painful yet oddly fascinating to watch from afar. Unfortunately, the first taste of the show’s music is just as troubled as the production. “Rise Above 1,” by U2′s Bono and the Edge (who wrote the play’s score) and the show’s star, Reeve Carney, is conventional and undercooked. A drab hip-hop drumbeat drags underneath a humdrum guitar lick while Bono and Carney belt out platitudes like, “In a time of treason/Is there time for trust/ Where there’s no them/ Only us.” The song represents the point in the musical when Peter Parker morphs into Spider-Man, but Bono and the Edge miss their mark in capturing the moment of transformation.
