Head Over Heels: Review, Pics

“Head Over Heels” is a mash-up that sounds weird and unworkable: It’s a jukebox musical using 18 songs by the 1980s all-female L.A. punk band The Go-Go’s. But it’s also a loose adaptation of Arcadia, a 1580s work of literature by Philip Sidney, a contemporary of Shakespeare.

Dressed in Elizabethan doublets, ruffs, crowns and long gowns, the performers speak in iambic pentameter when they’re not singing lyrics like “We got the beat/we got the beat/yeah we got it” and dancing the Cool Jerk.

This is silly, but the show doesn’t pretend otherwise, and, given the right mood, one can revel in its silliness. “Head Over Heels” is happy to be a musical comedy that winks at us, while under Michael Mayer’s fast-paced direction a ton of talented performers energetically deliver the songs, the shtick and the story in 19 colorful and sometimes off-color scenes.

But the musical also attempts something more beneath its busy surface

Full review on DC Theatre Scene

Click on any photograph to see it enlarged

Andrew Durand as Musidorus and Alexandra Socha as Philoclea

Tom Alan Robbins as Dametas and Jeremy Kushnier as King Basilius

Taylor Iman Jones as Mopsa (center) and the company

Bonnie Milligan as Pamela (center) with Tanya Haglund, Samantha Pollino, Ari Groover and Amber Ardolino

Rachel York as Queen Gynecia and Jeremy Kushnier as King Basilius (center) and the company

Peppermint (center) as Pythio, The Oracle of Delphi and the ensemble

Head Over Heels A New Musical