Xanadu, once a horrible movie starring Olivia Newton John and Gene Kelly, opened on Broadway last Tuesday night. If you’re into having fun, you will find it is an over the top, off the wall, zany and ditzy musical that will keep you smiling and clapping your hands for the very short hour an a half the show runs. Quite frankly I could have gone on laughing for another hour or act, but I sure enjoyed the soupcon that this was.
Xanadu, rewritten by the brilliant Douglas Carter Beane, is about a bunch of muses, Zeus and especially a roller skating girl, Australian natch (get it), who falls for a dumb street artist. Together they decide it would be a good idea to open a disco roller skating rink and of course you can’t imagine what it will be called.
Not much of a story, but who cares since the talent involved up on the stage, which by the way has members of the audience on it too, just like Inherit the Wind and Spring Awakening. (Note: The show originally was going to have the whole audience on the stage and use the theater itself as the skating rink. I would have loved to have seen that but it might have been a tad pricey), but it’s the cast which is to die for. There’s Kerry Butler (Penny P from Hairspray) who can sing and skate at the same time who is amazingly agile, a great singer and adorable, Cheyenne Jackson (All Shook Up) as the dumb artist, who is taking James Carpinello’s place who broke an ankle while fooling around on his skates, who is delightful, the always zany and over the top and bellowing Mary Testa and her sidekick here Jackie Hoffman (who has to be the funniest woman on a stage today) and finally Tony Roberts who plays Zeus (Notice I didn’t get around to a full explanation of the Greek connection since who cares about it anyway) who in reality is the guy who owns the warehouse that the kids want to turn into that roller skating Disco. Tony doesn’t skate (he told me nobody would inure him at his age) but has a great deal of campy fun with his part and his always excellent deep throated lines, even if he doesn’t have enough of them, are perfect.
The sets by David Gallo are obviously tiny since so is the Helen Hayes theater (the smallest theater on Broadway) but they’re fun and he uses every disco twirling reflecting ball he could find in the city in the big roller skating, a la Starlight Express, finale.
Now all this stupidity is not for everyone and I wouldn’t attempt to tell anyone over the age of 50 to go see it, especially the members of that gang we critics love to call the “ladies who lunch” and some of it drags just a bit. But forget all that because Xanadu will keep you happily giddy for its short length. I guess I would then tell you all that you gotta do, do, do buy tickets for Xanadu which means go, go, go and have a good time.
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