Xanadu, Xanadon't

In 1980, Xanadu was panned by film critics and “helped put the freeze on movie musicals in Hollywood for more than twenty years.” The London Evening News called it "the most dreadful, tasteless movie of the decade. Indeed, of all time."

So whose idea was it to make a stage musical from this bomb and, worse, bring it to Broadway? In the Playbill the list of producers and corporations and creative types is long and varied. Yet, again, how can so many otherwise (probably) smart people be so misguided? I envision them as a row of bobble-head dolls on the dashboard of the floor model, listening to some charismatic auto salesman who is pitching Detroit’s latest gas guzzler.

In Greek myth Zeus had nine daughters who then became the various muses: Calliope was the muse of epic poetry; Clio (history); Erato (love poetry); Euterpe (music); Melpomene (tragedy); Polyhymnia (sacred poetry); Terpsichore (dance); Thalia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy). Not one of them is well served in Xanadu except, maybe, Melpomene. All nine of these muses appear on stage plus several other people in togas and even some mythical creatures great and small. Zeus appears too in the person of Tony Roberts who, I must say, brings that mighty god down to earth.

There are some good performers but they are all trying too hard and have been given license to try anything, including inappropriate accents and a considerable amount of mugging, to coerce a smile onto our (my) stone cold face(s). The plot is simple and silly (which shouldn’t necessarily count against it): The muses come down to help or disrupt, depending on their various motives, in the establishment of a disco in Venice, CA in 1980. Yeah, that’s it; deal with it or go home. The show is 90 minutes with no intermission and I didn’t see any opportunity for escape. Dare I say I was unamused?

I was chastised for giving away a key element in 110 in the Shade (see below). However, warning, warning, warning, in Xanadu there is a lot of roller skating! I feared for the lives and limbs of the careening chorus, not to mention the people in the front row. Crash. Ouch!