HEAD OVER HEELS


In any other year, Pasadena Playhouse’s Head Over Heels would simply be a Best Production frontrunner. Arriving in November of 2021, this celebration of racial, sexual, and gender diversity set to over a dozen The Go-Go’s hits is nothing short of a theatrical miracle.

On paper at least, the idea of taking such ‘80s smashes as “We Got The Beat,” “Mad About You,” “Heaven Is A Place On Earth,” “Vacation,” “Our Lips Are Sealed,” and the title tune and stringing them together into a jukebox musical based on an obscure 16th-century play told in Elizabethan English (say what?) would seem destined to flop, which it exactly what Head Over Heels did on Broadway in 2018.

But that was before Jenny Koons and Sam Pinkleton took charge of re-conceiving, re-directing, and re-choreographing the show.

That was before a lead cast that on Broadway was nearly two-thirds white and about 90% cisgender was transformed into an ensemble far more representative of the world we live in today. (By my count, five of the eight leads are performers of color, one self-identifies with gender-neutral pronouns, and the role originally played by Broadway superstar Rachel York has been recast with a drag queen who calls herself Alaska 5000.)

That was before the most brilliant of design teams transformed the Pasadena Playhouse into a venue where a good chunk of the audience remains up on their feet on the downstairs dance floor and those seated up in the mezzanine get both a balcony and a front-row seat rolled into one.

Trimmed from two acts to a brick eighty-minute running time with nary a dull moment along the way, it matters not that Head Over Heels has a convoluted plot involving a King, a Queen, two Princesses, a Shepherd, an Oracle, at least one case of cross-dressing, four prophesies, and a land governed by a mysterious “Beat” (which they all “got”), or that the whole shebang is told in pseudo-Shakespearean.

Execution is everything, and you don’t have to be a Go-Go’s fan to go gaga for this Los Angeles premiere, though even those expecting an 1980s flashback a la Rock Of Ages will almost certainly fall under Head Over Heels’s magic spell.

The Playhouse’s entire orchestra section has been stripped bare to make room for scenic designer David Meyer’s dance-club set, around which general admission ticket holders congregate as the story unfolds around, among, and above them, with “bleacher” seats set up on the theater’s traditional stage area and only the mezzanine remaining intact. (I sat up there in the second row and felt I had the best seat in the house.)

Meyer and lighting designer Stacey Derosier have let their imaginations (and a gazillion party lights) run wild, and Hahnji Jang’s super-fanciful costumes and Christopher Enlow’s equally fantastical hair and wig designs feature their own rainbow of saturated iridescent colors.

Casts don’t get any more fabulously multitalented than lesbian icon Lea DeLaria as macho King Basilius reigning opposite a divalicious 5000 as Queen Gynecia, Shanice Williams (Philoclea) and Tiffany Mann (Pamela) as a pair royal princesses with voices as big as their personalities, George Salazar (Seymour in Pasadena Playhouse’s Little Shop) every bit as charming here as nerd-next-door shepherd Musidorus and his cross-dressing alter ego Cleophila, Emily Skeggs as gal-loving handmaiden Mopsa, original Broadway cast member/dance captain/associate choreographer Yurel Echezarreta filling in for the entire New York production’s eight-performer ensemble as The Player, and “queer Black drag superstar and activist extraordinaire” Freddie (pronouns they/them) as Oracle Pythio.

As for the fifteen or so Go-Go’s hits (some major, some new to me) that Broadway book writer James Magruder has cleverly inserted into a plot originally written by Sir Philip Sidney sometime in the late 1500s, they are in capable hands indeed, those of the show’s eight power-piped performers, music director Kris Kukul, an all-female band—conductor Laura Hall, B.B. Kates, Nicole Marcus, Hisako Ozawa, and Nikki Stevens—perched high above the action, and sound designers Danny Erdberg and Ursula Kwong Brown working their own wonders.

I’ve seen over two dozen indoor productions since June, and though there have been a few sensational ones among them, none has matched the spectacular achievement that is Head Over Heels.

There’s no better way to celebrate a return to normal (or at least normal-adjacent) than by catching Head Over Heels at the Pasadena Playhouse. It’ll have you doing somersaults of joy.

Conceived and Original Book by Jeff Whitty. Casting by The Telsey Office, Ryan Bernard Tymensky, CSA. Press Representative Davidson & Choy Publicity. Associate Producer: Jenny Slattery. Technical Director/Production Supervisor: Brad Enlow. Stage Manager: Sara Sahin. Assistant Stage Managers: Lydia Runge and Dylan Elhai. Publicist: Davidson & Choi Publicity.

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena.
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
November 14, 2021
Photos: Jeff Lorch

COVID-19 AND PATRON SAFETY GUIDELINES
– All patrons will be required to wear a mask fully covering their nose and mouth at all times while in the theater.
– Ticket holders will be required to be fully vaccinated and will need to provide a photo ID and proof of vaccination (physical vaccination card, a picture of vaccination card, or a digital vaccination record). Guests under 12 will not be admitted.
– Guests who need a reasonable accommodation for medical reasons or due to a sincerely held religious belief must provide proof of a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within 72 hours prior to entering the theater.

 

 

 

 

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