Go-Go’s add pop to 16th century story
Team of experts readies ‘Head Over Heels’ for its pre-Broadway run
Director Michael Mayer had no qualms about getting his old creative gang together for a new project. When Mayer accepted the assignment revising the musical mashup “Head Over Heels” for a Broadway run, he pulled in musical director Tom Kitt and designers Julian Crouch, Arianne Phillips and Kevin Adams. All had worked together with Mayer numerous times, including the 2014 Broadway revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and the upcoming opera “Marnie.” Mayer also tapped longtime colleague James Magruder to work on the musical’s book.
They were all happy to again throw in their lot with the bright, enthusiastic, Tonywinning director. The mutual loyalty has produced a successful string of high-profile projects and a liberated sense of artistic experimentation keeping their work fresh and relationships fruitful.
Mayer decided he would treat it as a new production, even though playwright Jeff Whitty (“Avenue Q”) originated the script and concept in 2015 for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
“Head Over Heels” combines the song catalog of the female power pop band the Go-Go’s with a book based on Sir Philip Sidney’s Elizabethan text “Old Arcadia” (circa 1580).
“The concept was absolutely stunning and hilarious,” Mayer said. “I loved the juxtaposition of these songs with the material.”
The reconceived “Head Over Heels” is in previews at the Curran for a four-week pre-Broadway run. The official tryout opening is Wednesday, April 18. The production opens at the Hudson Theatre in New York on July 26.
The story concerns a royal family that undertakes a road trip in order to avoid dire prophecy. They are comically unsuccessful.
The first call Mayer made was to composer and arranger Kitt. Kitt worked with Mayer on the stage adaptation of Green Day’s “American Idiot” and shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama with Brian Yorkey for their musical “Next to Normal.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone better at doing arrangements of pop music with a theater sensibility,” Mayer said of Kitt.
The Go-Go’s had five Top 40 hits and the band’s 1981 release, “Beauty and the Beat,” went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart behind the hit singles “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Are Sealed.” The band’s four albums and solo albums from songwriters Jane Wiedlin and Belinda Carlisle gave the theater makers more than enough material to pull from. (The Go-Go’s broke up in 1985 and reformed in 1999.)
Even though Kitt is writing new arrangements for the songs, he honors the source and lets it lead him creatively.
“The Go-Go’s have a singular and groundbreaking sound,” he said. “I want to make sure their songs are delivered with the energy and authenticity they created.”
As he’s arranging, Kitt takes into consideration who will be singing the song, whether it will be a duet or even three voices, and just what the song is being used for in that moment. This being musical theater, there are also reprises, transitions and incidental music that all need to be integrated.
“The songs themselves have to both live in the Go-Go’s style but also be adapted to serve our story and our tasks,” Kitt said.
Kitt said Mayer’s body of work, especially “Spring Awakening,” “American Idiot” and “Hedwig,” has given him a specific awareness of how pop and rock music works in contemporary theater.
“Michael has this knack for not only understanding where those songs come from and what their authenticity is but finding a way to pull them into the story in a way that feels organic,” Kitt said.
Mayer considers musicals a unique art form that has specific needs so it can live and breathe.
“I look at my job as being the chief surgeon, and the musical itself is an organism hell-bent on self-destruction,” Mayer said. “All of my collaborators — we’re all in surgery and we’re trying to keep this thing alive because it is an unnatural, unwieldy thing.”
When Mayer discussed “Head of Heels” with set designer Crouch, they hit on the idea of presenting the show like a “toy theater.”
“Because it’s an old play and old story we would use all the techniques from really old theater — painted drops,” Mayer said.
Costume designer Phillips jumped in, deciding costumes should be in the mash-up spirit as well.
“The costumes have a completely 2018 haute couture vibe, but they’re also based on real Tudoresque silhouettes and details. Some of them are applied with paint and some with Swarovski crystals,” Mayer said.
“The lighting does the same things — very naturalistic to bring out the set, or sometimes we’re at a rock concert. Everything’s in that world of juxtaposition,” Mayer said.
Book writer Magruder has refashioned some of what Whitty did, though the basic structure has remained intact. Three of the original characters have been cut, and a song has been added.
Magruder said there was no need to “camp up” the material, and even though the show is designed as a comic romp, they are playing it as straight as possible. There are no contemporary references. “We wanted to stay as weirdly hybrid period as possible within the parameters of blank verse, the Go-Go’s and Sidney,” Magruder said.
There are eight principal characters; each gets a full character arc over the course of the story. Naturally, they change while on the road.
“It’s like hitting the road to find out who you are, and there are obstacles along the way,” Magruder said.
Mayer believes that since much of the Go-Go’s material is unfamiliar, the audience will engage with the story. There will be no recognizing the lead-in to a particular song.
“What’s really genius about it is how well the songs function,” Mayer said. “We didn’t change a single lyric. They function brilliantly for these characters and for the moment that they come up.”
Mashing up history and contemporary sensibilities has a recognizable presence after “Hamilton.” Mayer suggests his “Spring Awakening” might have been an earlier tipping point.
“We had people in 19th century costumes singing contemporary music into microphones,” Mayer said.
“A lot of us were onto this concept of history and a contemporary sound crashing into each other.”