None of the usual thesaurus sources can provide an antonym for "no-brainer," but if an example were ever needed, "Head Over Heels" fills the bill. Here's a case where a Broadway highflier learns that the Go-Go's catalog is available for a theatrical treatment. Such songs as "Mad About You," "Vacation," "We Got the Beat" and the title song become part of the musical based on a 16th-century prose poem by Sir Philip Sidney about an ancient Greek duke whose ominous reading from an oracle sends him and his family into a seclusion that becomes a mob scene.
Beyond the odd marriage of these peppy songs with this story, the Go-Go's catalog of hits is thin compared to the troves mined from the careers of the Four Seasons for "Jersey Boys," Carole King for "Beautiful," and ABBA for "Mamma Mia!" Nor are they particularly story-driven songs, but now it's their turn on the theatrical turntable as "Head Over Heels" gets its first spin at the Curran Theatre in April before a planned-for Broadway run next year.
This will not actually be the first time audiences have seen "Head Over Heels," with an earlier version seen at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015. The biggest name now attached to the show is co-producer Gwyneth Paltrow, who has held readings of the musical at her homes in the Hamptons and Manhattan. The latter was attended by pre-scandal Harvey Weinstein, who reportedly wanted in on the show, but it was an offer Paltrow shrewdly declined.
The one constant among the creators is gay writer Jeff Whitty, who won a Tony Award for the book to "Avenue Q" and wrote the libretto for the musical based on Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" seen at ACT in 2011. Another gay Tony Award winner, Michael Mayer, is directing the production. He won his Tony for "Spring Awakening," and his Broadway credits also include "American Idiot," "Thoroughly Modern Millie," and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."
The project began when Whitty's attorney, who also represents the Go-Go's, told him that the group's songs were available for a jukebox musical. Whitty had no interest in using the songs to tell the group's up-and-down story, but somehow imagined that the songs could be combined with "The Arcadia," which he had first read in college.
"It had never been adapted for the stage, and it's a really great story," Whitty said at the time of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production. "I said, what if we put these two together, because I like the inclusion of opposites - that makes it fun to write a comedy improv of it."
Sidney's original narrative is incredibly complex, and he had not finished a revision that doubled its size when he died in 1586. The story is filled with sexual encounters, attempted rape, political machinations, violence, sleeping potions, and cross-dressing that leads to some inadvertent same-sex attractions. While his source material has both high drama and low comedy, Whitty has taken a resolutely irreverent approach, filled with knowing winks, anachronisms, and overt homosexual desires. At the last minute, he ended up rewriting his script in Shakespearean-style iambic pentameter.
"That's where the show began to get very eerie," he told Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2015, "because the idea of a beat, iambic pentameter, a heartbeat, that you're alive, we got the beat. All these crazy connections began happening, as though the Go-Go's knew in advance what I was going to do."
"Head Over Heels" is set to run April 24-May 30 at the Curran. Go to sfcurran.com to receive an alert when tickets go on sale.
Holiday happenings
"Oy Vey in a Manger" brings the Kinsey Sicks back to the city of their virgin birth - on a street corner in the Castro in 1994. The "dragapella beauty shop quartet" will be offering its more-naughty-than-nice take on seasonal songs for seven shows on Dec. 26-30 at the Palace Theatre, also home to "The Speakeasy" production. Tickets at thespeakeasysf.com.
Comic-politician Tom Ammiano is headlining Theatre Rhino's New Year's Eve celebration at the Gateway Theatre. The bill includes comedian Justin Lucas, singers Scott Gessford and Patricia Pittipan, and multi-faceted queer entertainers Bambi Lake and Birdie Bob Watt. The cast of the new Morris Bobrow show "Megabites: The Musical" will also perform. Tickets at therhino.org.
An early version of "Head Over Heels" that uses the songs of the Go-Go's to tell a 16th-century saga at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015. A pre-Broadway production will open at the Curran in April. Photo: Jenny Graham/OSF
The Kinsey Sicks will offer a new version of their holiday show "Oy Vey in a Manger" at the Palace Theatre starting Dec. 26. Photo: Paco Ojeda