It’s a go-go!
Even though producer Paltrow defers to the Boss
S
ORRY, Go-Go’s: My lips are not sealed: “Head Over Heels,” a new musical featuring songs by the ’80s girl band, will open this summer at the Hudson Theatre. Gwyneth Pal
trow is producing the $15 million musical with her ex-boyfriend
Donovan Leitch. Helping them finance the show will be Jujamcyn Theaters president Jordan Roth.
Roth wanted “Head Over Heels” for his Walter Kerr Theatre, but he’s got this squatter there called Bruce
Springsteen, who refuses to leave. Springsteen extended his show until June 30, but may linger a bit longer because he’s having so much fun — and grossing nearly $2.5 million a week.
“There’s not much Jordan can do but stand at the back of the house and cheer him on,” a source says.
The joke around Broadway is that the Kerr should be renamed the Boss.
The Hudson, by the way, isn’t too shabby. Its owner, the Ambassador Theatre Group, spent millions restoring it. The Hudson also has the best bar of any theater on Broadway — and who’s not going to want a glass or three of Taittinger before bopping along to “We Got the Beat,” “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “Vacation”?
“Head Over Heels” is based on “The Arcadia,” a 16th-century prose poem by Sir Philip Sidney. The poem features gods and shepherds and dukes, oracles and lions and bears — and crossdressers. “Avenue Q” writer Jeff
Whitty did a modern adaptation of the poem, but some say his loosey-goosey script baffled potential backers.
“I think we were in the woods somewhere, with the men dressed as women and the women dressed as men,” one told me. “Or maybe we were on Mount Olympus. I really wasn’t sure.”
After a tryout at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015 and a couple of backers’ auditions at Paltrow’s Greenwich Village townhouse, Whitty was let go.
Negotiating his exit package “took forever,” sources say, but he was finally replaced by James Magruder, who specializes in adapting the classics, although his 1997 “Triumph of Love” was not a Triumph of Box Office. But the director was
Michael Mayer, who went on to stage “Spring Awakening” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” with Neil Patrick Harris.
Mayer is directing “Head Over Heels” and brought Magruder onboard.
The new script, sources say, is snappy, clear and fun.
“Head Over Heels” will begin an out-of-town tryout at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre in April. Theater owner Carole Shorenstein Hays is planning a splashy announcement at a cocktail party in the theater next weekweek. Guests will be dirdirected to enter tthe Curran down an alley and through the stage door. That alley, as theater and film bbuffs know, is where parts of “All About Eve” were shot. Paltrow is planning her own splashy announcement at the end of the month in New York. Details are under wraps, but I’m hearing it’s going to be one hell of a party.