If you actually know the melody that accompanies those lyrics – a perfect musical parallel to their cheesiness – then you must go directly to the Orange County Performing Arts Center, there to see the object of your unholy affection. “Xanadu” will flash its unapologetic ’80s excess in Costa Mesa through Dec. 27.
Playwright Douglas Carter Beane has found a way to simultaneously mock and pay gentle homage to “Xanadu,” surely one of the most outrageously artless movie musicals ever to flicker across the big screen. Beane, who proved in his Tony-winning play “The Little Dog Laughed” that he knows a thing or two about camp, vacuous show-biz types and the distinct pleasures of over-the-top-ness, is the perfect talent to transform “Xanadu” from infamous Hollywood bomb into a carefree celebration of the banal.
Beane follows the basics of the plot to the 1980 movie, which itself was based on an unmemorable 1947 Rita Hayworth vehicle, “Down to Earth.” (”Xanadu’s” only saving grace, preserved gloriously in this show, is the songs, written by E.L.O.’s Jeff Lynne and Olivia Newton-John’s musical muse, John Farrar.)
Sonny Malone, a chalk artist living in Venice Beach, has big ambitions but can’t find success. After creating a large mural of the Greek Muses, Sonny is overcome with self-loathing and decides to drown himself.
But one of the Muses, Clio – the pretty one who looks the most like Olivia Newton-John – persuades her sister Muses (some are sister-boys – Muses in bad drag) to descend to earth and help Sonny through his creative funk. They spring to terrestrial life through Sonny’s chalk rendering.
Muses must disguise themselves when mingling with humans, so Clio comes up with a persona that includes a new name (Kira), roller skates, leg warmers, feathered bangs and a really bad Austr-eye-lian accent. The look is so 1980. She and Sonny meet, click, and before you can say “Olympus” she has inspired him to come up with his creative masterstroke: a roller disco. (Like I said, it’s 1980.)
Silly Clio is unaware that her interest in Sonny’s fate has given rise to jealousy among two of her sisters, Melpomene and Calliope. They conspire to trick Clio into falling in love with Sonny, thus breaking one of the golden rules set by their father, super-god Zeus: their kind should never get moony over mortals.
Meanwhile, Sonny has discovered an abandoned club that’s perfect for the roller disco. With Kira’s help he locates the owner, a frustrated ex-bandleader named Danny Maguire. Their first meeting isn’t exactly a love fest, but this is musical theater so you know what will happen.
The same goes for these questions, all rhetorical: Will Zeus get angry at Clio? Will the witchy sisters get their comeuppance? Will Clio and Sonny find happiness? Will there be a huge dance number to wrap things up? Will disco survive? (OK, I threw in that last one to see if you were paying attention.)
Beane has peppered his script with wonderful early-’80s banalities (remember “jive turkey”?), and costume designer David Zinn never resists an opportunity to display the star-spangled gaudiness of the era. Director Christopher Ashley keeps his performers in high-energy parody mode, and they fulfill that demand with vigor.
Elizabeth Stanley has the wide-eyed innocence and dewy look of Newton-John (the dew is literal – the creative team recreates that inexplicable demigod mist that covered Newton-John during the dance routines). Her voice is less ethereal and her body less wispy than the Aussie pop star’s, but she’s persuasive nonetheless. And yes, the girl roller skates like a derby champ.
Max von Essen’s Sonny is the perfect ’80s himbo. It’s not just the too-short cutoffs and the tight shirts; von Essen’s Sonny serves up brainless pleasantries like a guy who’s spent too many hours baking on the Venice boardwalk. And when Sonny listens uncomprehendingly to Danny’s rat-a-tat jokes and metaphors, von Essen makes him look like a cow trying to grasp calculus.
Natasha Yvette Williams and Annie Golden share some wonderful comic moments and clever lines as Melpomene and Calliope. And Larry Marshall combines gruffness, tenderness and a little heartsickness as Danny, doing a better job with the role than an uncomfortable-looking Gene Kelly did in the film.
“Xanadu” is not for those who like their musical theater served formally. This is not Rodgers and Hammerstein.
But it is a farce of the first order. Beane has mastered the art of co-opting dreck, reveling in its awfulness and turning that into a thing of beauty. It’s a show that demands familiarity with musical theater’s conventions and a well-developed sense of irony on the viewer’s part, but the rewards are rich indeed. Best of all, you get to see leg warmers again!
Florida Theatrical Association 