Head Over Heels @ Uptown Players
Photos by Mike Morgan Photography, Inc.
—Review by Martha Heimberg
Uptown Players opens its 21st season with the regional premiere of Head Over Heels, a jubilant jukebox musical coupling the songs of the all-female rock band the Go-Go’s with a Renaissance pastoral romance by Sir Philip Sidney.
Sound wild? You can bet your gender-bending plot points it is.
The show, which premiered on Broadway in 2018, is scripted by Jeff Whitty and James Magruder. It folds hits from the popular ‘80s band into Sidney’s oracle-driven story of the country of Arcadia—and the journey its citizens must take to save their groovy kingdom. Like, for example, getting over being ridiculous about gender identity, straight and gay love affairs, and whether or not a lowly shepherd can marry a high-born princess.
Directed by Penny Ayn Maas, with musical direction by Lee Harris, the show opens with the infectious “We Got the Beat.” The full 18-member company is dancing and clapping hands, outfitted in gorgeous Renaissance-glam costumes designed by Arianne Phillips and adapted by Suzi Cranford and Breianna Barrington. Choreographer Evor Wright blends get-down moves with balletic leaps and turns throughout, adding to the surprise and playfulness of the song and dance numbers. Dennis Canright’s set design opens the stage wide to accommodate multiple dancing couples, and sets each scene with painted scrims featuring Doric columns, leafy forests, or a lover’s cave for some sexy shadow-art choreography.
The busy plot can get a bit confounding in the longish first act, but the songs and the talent onstage sweep us along, with comic mugging and some well-timed raunchy jokes. King Basilius (a pompous, hyper-masculine Tim Brawner) and Queen Gynecia (belting mezzo Caroline Rivera) rule Arcadia. Princess Pamela (a comically vain Laura Lites) refuses all suitors, and her winsome younger sister Philoclea (bright soprano Kylie Stewart) is courted by the shepherd Musidorus (a hilarious cross-dressing Seth Paden). Suddenly, the glamorous non-binary oracle Pythio (Lee Walter in all their alluring, long-legged glory) delivers four spooky prophecies that will destroy Arcadia if the forecasts are allowed to come true.
What to do when your world is threatened with annihilation? The dauntless king, queen and court hit the road, along with some swank lavender and gold luggage. Right away, the amorous adventures get hotter and quirkier. Our love-struck shepherd dons an Amazonian wig and breast-enhancing armor, the better to confuse and seduce just about everybody. Princess Pamela’s long-suffering maid Mopsa (a knowing, feisty Brett Warner) gets fed up with the non-stop whining of her mistress, and splits. Warner’s upbeat rendition of “Vacation,” delivered stripped down to a swimsuit and surrounded by the terrific female ensemble at poolside, is perfect comic relief. Corset off and admitting her deep yearning for Pamela, she opens the gate for all the sexual reckonings to come.
No surprise that the high-energy delivery of hits from the Go-Go’s catalogue is the crowd-pleasing fun of the production. Stewart’s Philoclea hits the high notes in “Good Girl,” a telling song about women trained to “want everyone to love me.” Lites’ Pamela is a manic delight singing “How Much More” as she questions her ability to entertain male suitors much longer. Brawner and Rivera, as the king and queen tricked into rejuvenating their waning attraction to each other, are funny and endearing in “This Old Feeling.” And the title song, delivered by all the lovers who find themselves “Head Over Heels” in a divine discovery of lusty adoration, is a kind of anthem to love in its many-gendered iterations.
Paden’s pumped-up shepherd Musidorus leads the male ensemble in a bawdy rendition of “Mad About You”—later reprised by the entire gender-shifting cast as “Mad About Them.” Nobody misses a beat or a pronoun in this pansexual utopia, where love comes first and bliss comes in all genders and sizes.
All’s well that ends with straight and gay couples embracing, the ensemble reprising “We Gotthe Beat,” and the audience clapping along. You can’t beat that.
WHEN: Through December 18
WHERE: Kalita Humphreys Theater
WEB: uptownplayers.org
