Is this Broadway’s maddest musical?
Head Over Heels Hudson Theatre, New York ★★★★★
Since Mamma Mia! first opened in 1999, countless other jukebox musicals have tried to match its unexpected world-straddling success.
But Broadway’s latest must be the most bizarre yet. It mixes the infectious songs of Eighties new-wave band the Go-go’s with a plot straight out of the 1580s. And yet the big-name clout behind it – Gwyneth Paltrow is a producer, and the costumes are by Arianne Phillips, Madonna’s longtime stylist – signals that, despite the wacky premise, it’s a big deal.
The story is loosely based on Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, a crossdressing romance that pre-empted not only Shakespeare’s comedies but also the gender fluidity of today.
With its blend of radical pop and Renaissance wit, Head Over Heels aims to be as groundbreaking as the Go-go’s, the first all-female group to write their own songs and play their own instruments ever to have a No1 album in America. In the UK, however, the band never broke the Top 40; better known is the subsequent solo career of Belinda Carlisle, their lead singer, whose 1986 hit Mad About You becomes a standout number here.
Choreographer Spencer Liff and the ensemble make dazzling work of the band’s top songs – including Our Lips Are Sealed. But the show’s book, originally written by Avenue Q’s Jeff Whitty and revised by James Magruder, is packed with so much clever wordplay that there’s scant room for characters to evolve.
The story unfolds with Elizabethan flourishes: dialogue in verse and lots of doths and thys. Oracle Pythio (played by drag artist Peppermint, who’s billed as the first transgender woman to create a principal role in a Broadway show) warns that Arcadia is in danger of losing what keeps life orderly – its famous “beat”. Naturally, this warning comes soon after a boisterous rendition of We Got the Beat.
Among Pythio’s prophecies is that the king will lose his throne. So King Basilius (Jeremy Kushnier) leaves Arcadia with his queen (Rachel York) and grown daughters to ward off any usurper. It’s love, not war, that gets made on their journey. Older daughter Pamela (Bonnie Milligan) discovers an attraction to her lady-in-waiting Mopsa (Taylor Iman Jones), while Musidorus (Andrew Durand), the shepherd deemed unworthy of younger daughter Philoclea (Alexandra Socha), finds a whole new self cross-dressing as an Amazon warrior.
Michael Mayer, the director, was part of the team behind Spring Awakening, another musical about the sexual stirrings of youth, which juxtaposed a 19th-century setting with a rock score. Head Over Heels is that show’s companion in subject but antithesis in style. It wears its irreverence not just on its sleeve but all over its stylish gowns and doublets.
As a result, the plot wears thin over the musical’s 135 minutes. Yet it’s impossible to resist the exuberance of a talented cast. With music that feels as warm and breezy as summer itself, the show bursts with frisky fun, but may not be substantial enough to lure in audiences for a long run.
Booking until Feb 17. Tickets: headoverheelsthemusical.com