Chasing The Muse.(Xanadu)(The Last Year in the Life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as Devised by Waterwell: A Rock Operetta)(Theater review)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 23-JUL-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

"Xanadu" (at the Helen Hayes) is so ridiculously brilliant, so lavish and sublime a confection that any set of adjectives you might come up with after a single viewing will more than likely be replaced by another set of ineffectual adjectives once you've seen the show a second or third time. It's probably the most fun you'll have on Broadway this season, one reason being that everything about it is so resolutely anti-Broadway. In its wildness and ecstasy, "Xanadu" is a welcome relief from the synthetic creations that some Broadway producers have been peddling for years. Here you can't count the disco balls fast enough--not to mention the roller skates, the frosted-pink lips, and the glittering spandex that the director, Christopher Ashley, hurls at you like a PCP flashback. "Xanadu" is far sleazier and cheesier than conventional musical theatre, and it points out just how tame most other musicals are.

A bit of background: The current show was inspired by the 1980 movie musical of the same name. The film starred the Australian pop sensation Olivia Newton-John as a Greek muse who materializes out of a mural painted on a wall in Venice, California, and befriends an artist called Sonny. She names herself Kira...

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