Go-Go's Musical opened on Broadway on July 26 – Variety

It's really hard to laugh when someone holds a gun to your head. That's the way this Go-Go feels in "Head Over Heels," an over-written, over-designed, and generally exaggerated production, directed by Michael Mayer. From the sets and costumes to the performance style, the basic principle seems to be: Less is boring and more is never enough. Grace, without a doubt, to Delphi's Oracle (played here by Peppermint), it's a miracle that at least part of the spirit of Jeff Whitty's original book pbaded through.

The story is attributed to Sir Philip Sidney, an Elizabethan sonneteer whose 180,000-word narrative poem, "The Arcadia," has inspired many other imitations. Not that there is something wrong with that. If Shakespeare could shoot from this rom-com material (see "As You Like It"), Whitty and James Magruder, who did the adaptation for this Broadway production, can also do so

. get lost in the woods, quarrel with substitute lovers, but end up with their own loves at the end. As Sir Philip and Shakespeare have said, the paired lovers were all boys and girls. In this modern version, gender identities are much more fluid.

A vigorous interpretation of the mega-success of Go-Go, "We Got the Beat", introduces us to the enchanted kingdom of Arcadia, where the good King Basilius (Jeremy Kushnier, good baritone) and his faithful but bored wife , Gynecia (the divine Rachel York), became badually jaded. But just when the King and Queen lose that feeling of love, their two daughters wake up to theirs.

Bonnie Milligan, who created this role of choice at the Shakespeare Festival of Oregon, is bubbling with joy (and manages to support her). generously endowed eldest daughter, Princess Pamela. Convinced of her beautiful beauty ("Belle"), the dear girl rejects all his suitors, which gives grief to his parents but laughs a lot.

Meanwhile, her so-called simple but really adorable young sister, Philoclea (Alexandra Socha, who sings softly and dares to play her role subtly), falls in love with a shepherd. Musidore the shepherd is not a great prize, but Andrew Durand goes to the test, tries, tries.

Pamela and Philoclea sideline themselves and leave Arcadia with the rest of the court when the king misrepresents a severe warning from the Oracle of Delphi. That's Peppermint, who miraculously does not hide the bulky costumes designed for her by Arianne Phillips. But once the entire court, which includes the Viceroy of the King, Dametas (the always reliable Tom Alan Robbins), and his beautiful daughter, Mopsa (the newcomer Taylor Iman Jones), are in the forest, there is always a chance that they are swallowed up by the sets (Julian Crouch) or blinded by the lack of lighting (Kevin Adams). "Holiday" drowns Mopsa in kitsch while she travels to the island of Lesbos through a teeming sea of ​​sirens. A pleasing example of all these gaudy excesses: the Temple of the Oracle, which Andrew Lazarow hung with really scary projections of snakes writhing. ("Slither here," Oracle invites us.)

At some point in this endless journey, the characters begin to escape the ever-intrusive sets and fall in love, or something like that. Here, finally, some of Go-Go's songs are inscribed in the scenes of the book. Pamela and Mopsa discover themselves in "Automatic Rainy Day". The King and Queen rekindle their love in "This Old Feeling". Philoclea opens his heart to Musidorus in "Here You Are". And Peppermint runs the company in a rendering of "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" it's worth the wait.

As at the top of Act II, when everyone has been on the road for so long, they've all lost touch with the real world, the title track "Head Over Heels" really makes sense . But the show never recovers from the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. There is the effort to make appear the choreography Spencer Liff worn out, vaguely in vogue. There is constant struggle to push and push songs in places where they do not fit. And then there is the pressure to reconfigure the dynamics of the character, playing with the traditional distinctions between genres until the show conforms to a notion of ideological transgression. A lot of push and pull goes into the work of making a musical – but this one shows the tension.