Musical Mondays: Head Over Heels--the Go-Go's Musical

Head Over Heels is a new musical spoken in Old English with the music of The Go-Go’s. It is a very strange mix that feels ambitious. Ultimately though, the music is like a concept car—a really interesting, strange concept car that isn’t fully fleshed out but definitely piques the interest. Unfortunately, the musical spends so much time winking at the audience at every joke and telling the audience “see, see?!” at every plot point, that it drives the concept car right off of a cliff.

First, let’s start with the positives. As I said in my review of Jagged Little Pill, Tom Kitt really puts out some amazing orchestrations. I will definitely listen to this cast album whenever it’s released. I was not a massive fan of The Go-Go’s beforehand—though I didn’t dislike them, it was more an ignorance of their music beyond the few biggest hits—but the musical numbers were a lot of fun. Also, I was unquestionably here for the costuming. Elizabethan garb with a flair for color and shine—Shakespeare meets Betsey Johnson. Finally, I thought there were some really strong performances, strong choreography, and strong scenery. It was really nice to see almost all of the staging be just good stagecraft as opposed to relying on technology.

There were a lot of positives to work through, but man did the book really make this miss the mark. It should be noted that there is nothing wrong with some camp, and that depending on the venue, sometimes the campiest works can be the most fun. But it has to feel right for the venue. Campy jokes that work on a 60s sitcom would feel cheap on an HBO comedy series. Here, the campy jokes that might have worked when it was originally workshopped or shown at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival fell really flat for me and had me groaning more than once. For example, Peppermint (the first transgender actor to have a major role on Broadway and long overdue) has an opening line where she says her character “transsssssscends gender.” I think it is a safe bet that there is not a single person who goes to see The Go-Go’s musical on Broadway disagrees that binary gender is an archaic construct. It is. That’s not the issue. The issue is this joke just feels like it is just a gigantic wink from the creative team to make sure we all nod and laugh rather than just let Peppermint exist as a badass character (which there were moments the role was pretty badass.) It was a consistent theme of the creative team yelling GET IT after a joke.

Additionally, some plot points felt like they were meant to have gravitas and just absolutely did not. There is one major character death; I won’t give into more to avoid spoilers, but the entirety of the relationships involving the character before then were completely founded on jokes and shallow. When the character died, there was an over the top emotional song that with a more fully developed character could have really landed. Instead it felt as if the creative team was telling me I was supposed to feel sad. The song was pretty and well-sung, but I absolutely did not care about the death itself. It was at most a shrug.

Ultimately, Head Over Heels is a really interesting concept that doesn’t live up on what could be an awesome premise. With ticket sales reportedly struggling during previews, I do worry that when it opens and reviews start pouring in that it may never get an opportunity to live up to that promise.