It may not be great art, but Xanadu—the new musical onstage through March 3 at Franklin’s Boiler Room Theatre—sure is great fun! Pure, unadulterated escapism, Xanadu is laugh-out-loud funny, thanks primarily to the book by Douglas Carter Beane, but you have to give props to director Corbin Green and his talented cast who bring the sublimely ridiculous musical (featuring the music of Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne and John Farrar) to life onstage.
Green’s cast serves up the campy musical with style and flair, circa 1980—that long ago era of leg warmers, shoulder pads, mall hair, disco…well, everything that has provided fodder for VH1’s long-running I love the ‘80s and which fuels my own hazy, sex- and drug-fueled memories of the decade—and they do so with reckless, yet altogether appropriately self-absorbed, abandon. Plus, they do it on roller skates at least some of the time. What could possibly be more fun?
Based on the 1980 groaningly bad cult film Xanadu that starred Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly (!), which was, in turn, based on a Rita Hayworth movie from 1947—now there’s a pedigree for a stage musical that most certainly appeals to “the gays”—the musical theater take on the story actually serves up enough intended comedy and entertainment to delight almost anyone.
Xanadu focuses on a Greek muse named Clio, who descends from Mt. Olympus in order to inspire Sonny Malone, a struggling street artist plying his trade on the mean streets of Venice Beach, California. Sonny hopes to achieve his artistic dream of creating his own “Apex of the arts,” a place where theater, music, visual art, dance—all that shit, really—comes together for the greater good to craft something unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Naturally, that means Sonny hopes to open a roller disco. No, really. What would catch the 1980 vibe more eloquently and more succinctly than that? A roller disco, my friends, is the emblem of stagnant, unfulfilling 1980s imagination and creativity, the cradle of civilization for everyone who came of age during that decade.
When Clio first enounters Sonny, she has morphed (well, not really, but that’s what she would do if special effects were readily, and cheaply, available) into a winsome Aussie lass named Kira who, outfitted in leg warmers and skates, rolls straight into Sonny’s heart, in the process unleashing all kinds of wackiness and the potential for catastrophic consequences (as a demi-god, Clio will be sent straight to the underworld if she falls in love with a mere mortal).
Of course, you know from the very moment that Sonny steps onstage in cut-offs so short you can tell what his religion is—and Kira skates up in an abbreviated Grecian gown—that romantic entanglements will ensue. (I speak from personal experience, since 1980 was “my summer of white shorts,” during which laying by the pool to deepen my tan and trolling gay bars in search of my own “muse”—yes, children, that’s what we called it back then—were my favorite extracurricular activities). As contrived as it may sound, Sonny’s search for artistic validation speaks to me on a multitude of levels (not the least of which is in my pants). Xanadu, without any artistic pretense, transported me back to my 22nd year, flooding my heart with so many memories (of tea dances and poppers, Jennifer Holliday and Dreamgirls, registering to vote and falling into a bowl of potato chips…oh, lord, the stories I could tell…).
But who could ever have predicted that a Broadway musical (which opened in 2007 starring Cheyenne Jackson and Kerry Butler, ultimately running for 500 performances) based upon a movie with Olivia Newton-John could be so much fun? In fact, the relationship between Sonny and Kira remains rather chaste and old-fashioned, there’s a subplot focusing on Clio’s relationship with business mogul Danny Maguire in 1945 (when he was just blowing on a licorice stick), and the inclusion of a whole bunch of demi-gods, gods and mythological creatures who come together to flesh out the story.
