Sunday Showtunes

WE ARE NOT A MUSE

The next day I saw – don’t laugh – “Xanadu,” which is advertised as “Xanadu on Broadway” with the tag line:  “Seriously.”  To that I respond:  “Seriously?  Really?”  Why anyone would take a famously bad flop movie and sincerely try to make it into a Broadway musical is beyond me.  [The answer, of course, is that they can’t, and the writers wisely made this show campy.]  But since every show now is a movie (soon there will be no movie left from the 1980’s or 1990’s that hasn’t been made into a Broadway musical), I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. 

The show’s other tag line is “A man. A muse.  A life-altering musical comedy.”  Hmmm.  I’m not sure how, exactly, my life has been altered except that I spent ninety minutes that could have been better spent driving straight pins into my eyes.  Actually, the show wasn’t that bad, and some of it was rather fun.  I did get tired of the camp, and thought the few times it was simply fun and not trying so hard to be a “cult” musical it was at its best, but the audience consisted of an inordinate amount of gay men and/or cult fans of the film, and they ate it up with a spoon.  The story is similar to the movie but very few of the movie’s lines remain in the play.  This version takes place both in Los Angeles and on Mount Olympus – the story concerns ancient Gods (Zeus, Terpsichore, Calliope, Aphrodite, Hermes, Centaur, etc.) who send a muse to earth to help an artist open a roller disco.  Kerry Butler (a favorite of mine since “Bat Boy”) plays the muse, Clio aka Kira, impersonating Olivia Newton-John complete with a purposely-bad Australian accent.   The artist was to be played by James Carpinello but he broke his ankle (he and Butler spend a lot of the show on roller skates as do the dancers), so the opening has been delayed and understudy Cheyenne Jackson plays the part.   He has a tremendous singing voice; better than Carpinello I think.  (I see now why they cast that Starbuck in “110 in the Shade” – Cheyenne was busy in “Xanadu”).  Tony Roberts plays both Zeus and the owner of Xanadu. 

 The score is all the Electric Light Orchestra songs from the movie (“I’m Alive,” “Magic,” “Evil Woman,” “Strange Magic,” etc.) plus more, and it takes the “Saturday Night Fever” approach of finding ways to make the songs work as characters sing them to each other (which doesn’t happen in the film).  A couple of times it’s clever:  in “Have You Never Been Mellow,” for example, there is a line that goes:  “Running around as you do, with your head up in the clouds – I was like you.”  This is sung to Zeus.  (God of Mt. Olympus, get it?)  There’s also the occasional fun a la “Mamma Mia” in hearing a cue line and then finding out which song comes after it.   In fact the show borrows from so many other shows that I don’t have time to make a complete list.  There is also fun in the special effects – one neat bit is when the artist walks into a phone booth to make a call, and soon thereafter (after having been given a magic “zing” by the muse) opens the doors and emerges on roller skates!  Somehow they were placed on his feet without us being aware of it so it’s fun when he suddenly bursts forth on wheels.

It’s very self-referential (everything since “The Producers” is), making fun of itself, the form (including musical-theatre monologues:  “How do I get her back?” the artist tells us, followed up with “Who am I talking to?”), the songs themselves (even the way they are sung – often the singing itself is mocked with a purposely-bad “breathy” style – if you know “The Wedding Singer” and think “To My Dearest Robbie” “just in love with love” you know what I mean), even the fact that the movie sucked.  It’s set in 1980 and at one point the muses declare, “Let this year, 1980, be the year that quality and integrity were banished from the arts!”  (A jab at, among other things, the “British invasion” of Broadway in the 1980’s).  At another time the club owner says that they will take anything, “even a sucky movie,” and “throw it up on a stage and call it a musical!”  (Which got applause – an odd punch line since we all paid over $100 a ticket to see a show that’s basically calling itself crap!)  There are jabs at shows playing nearby, such as “The Phantom of the Opera” across the street:  “What is the word,” one muse asks, “for something that is so pretentious and serious that you just have to laugh at it?”  Her sister answers:  “Andrew Lloyd Webber?”  “Xanadu” is 90 minutes with no intermission, and near the end someone comments on the show being short, with a happy ending:  “Short, and ending happily?” the muse asks.  “They’re just mounting the barricade for the first time across the street!”  (“Les Miserables,” 3 hours long and ending with nearly everyone killed, is also playing across the street).  They make fun of the fact that the actors play multiple roles:  “I am here to protest,” Melpomene says to Zeus, “and Calliope would be here too but for the drawbacks of double-casting.”  (The actress who plays Calliope, Jackie Hoffman (the wonderful Mrs. Pinkerton and gym teacher in “Hairspray”), is onstage at the time playing Medusa).

There are audience members seated on the stage (like ”Cats” and “Spring Awakening”) but I couldn’t detect any reason for this and they are only referred to once.  However, they are given glow sticks to wave around for the big “Xanadu” finale which does look splendid as suddenly dozens of disco mirror balls descend, the proscenium lights up in chasers, and the cast starts doing gymnastics on roller skates. 

The acting area is very small – the show is in a small theatre normally used for straight plays, and it’s very inexpensively constructed with one unit set (platforms and ancient columns; the audience and the band are on platforms).  In fact the entire show could easily be performed in a supper club or in a black-box theatre.  Since it only cost about twelve dollars to produce I’m sure that even if it flops it will still make its money back!  The cult fans alone should keep it packed (and like all shows, the performance I saw was sold out).  Bottom line for me on “Xanadu” is – cute show, often fun, hope it does well, but won’t go down in the history of the arts and I am in no hurry to see it again.

KSHO broadcasts to the Mid-Willamette Valley in Western Oregon.
Among the communities served are Albany, Corvallis, and Lebanon.