Head Over Heels
Songs by the Go-Go’s
Based on The Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney
Conceived & Original Book by Jeff Whitty
Adapted by James Magruder
Music Supervision, Orchestration & Arrangements by Tom Kitt
Choreographed by Spencer Liff
Directed by Michael Mayer
Hudson Theatre
November 21, 2018
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.

Sometimes I get the urge to be a total tourist I’m New York.  I want to walk around Times Square and run into people by taking pictures of all the tall buildings.  I want to do that avoidance dance as all of those poorly masked cartoon characters waddle to you to take the pictures with mandatory tips. I want to read each of the jumbo-trons and plan a meal in one of the oversized restaurants.  And to this perfect tourist day, I would get tickets to see Head Over Heels.  This musical, struggling at the box office, is an odd fairy tale like adventure of a kingdom held bound by a curse and threatened to “loose their beat.”  For an out-of-towner this really could be the perfect show.

The music in the show is all brought to you by the greatest hits of the Go-Go’s – – and greatest hits was the problem.  I only knew three of the songs.  It was a bit like going to a juke box musical and being able to only hum along with three songs.  The Go-Go’s just seemed an odd choice for me.  Listening to the audience in the lobby at intermission, they didn’t seem to have much of a following in musical theatre people. To this, I found that the songs were being a bit shoved into the story moments.  It is as if the Go-Go’s had a popular slow song about forgotten love – so we got to get this story quickly to some moment that resembles this song.  Things just didn’t match very well.  And while it was funny to see characters dressed up to play Once on a Mattress speaking and moving as if they were in a Go-Go’s video, that joke to got old too

I do think the show had some promise by introducing Peppermint – as the Playbill credits her – the first transgender person ever given a leading role.  That really is a first.  And the musical did make some good play about gender and sexuality and the stuff of all good stories – but it never got radical enough.  It never wanted loose its PG rating.  It remained Once Upon a Mattress with some Go Go music and a bit, mind you only a bit, of gender debate.

BUT take your pictures in Times Square, grab some fried fish at Bubba Gump’s and laugh for a couple of hours at Head Over Heels.