THEATER REVIEW
“Xanadu”
Produced by: The SoLuna Studio - Hauppauge
Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur
Katie Murano plays the Muse, Kira, in SoLuna’s “Xanadu”
By rights, “Xanadu” should never have made it to the Great White Way. After all, how many Broadway musicals can you name that have been patterned after a 1980 movie flop which ‘won’ (if that term can be used) no fewer than seven dreaded ‘Hollywood Razzie Worst Awards’ (another euphemistic misnomer if ever there was one) … for Worst Director … Picture … Screenplay … Musical … Actor … Actress … and just to rub it in – Worst Original Song?
Geez! Sounds like the producers should have paid the audience to come to New York’s Helen Hayes Theater seven years ago … if only to express sympathy for the cast and ‘tsk-tsk’ the principals responsible for the inevitable carnage to come … right?
Well … not so fast.
Against all odds, the spoofy 2007 stage show not only garnered a couple of Tony nominations, it flat-out won Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards … ran for a highly respectable 561 performances … and a successful national tour ensued. Thus, with a nod to Samuel Taylor Coleridge it wouldn’t be too great a stretch to paraphrase his famed opium-induced poem as follows: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a … pleasure-dome decree.” Or to use the twenty-first century vernacular: “Guess what: this show’s pretty good!”
That is not to say the SoLuna Studio on Old Willets Path in Hauppauge (next to Butterfield’s Restaurant) has re-invented theatrical sliced bread. Indeed, few members of the energetic young cast seem able to carry a tune much farther than the nearby Long Island Expressway. But this is a satire, bear in mind. Like most parodies, it depends on sarcastic comedy, not the fine arts, for its success … and “Xanadu” delivers what it promises: a rollicking, sardonic caricature!
Led by Katie Murano and Bobby Peterson, the show tells of a Greek goddess who descends to Earth (Venice Beach, California, no less) there to help a down-and-out entrepreneur produce the world’s greatest-ever artistic creation … get the digitalis … a disco on roller skates! And if that concept isn’t funky enough, the spiritual muse actually falls for the struggling artist.
To add to the outrage, the besotted goddess takes it on the chin from her jealous sister muses and … well, you get the idea … muddles and mix-ups equal mayhem, as Nicole Gebler, Melanie Mednick, and Nick Caron, are flawlessly executing Karen Braun’s clever choreography.
Not long into this chaotic undertaking, you might be inclined to give up on absorbing the ridiculous plot and less-than-memorable music, and simply permit the ambitious cast to do their feverish thing while you just watch. And watch you will, unless I miss my guess. One reason for that, oddly, has to do with the off-key vocals. Whether the singing ineptitude is contrived or genuine, the perceived incompetence actually facilitates our tongue-in-cheek acceptance of the free-wheeling absurdity taking place on stage. At one point, a grimacing Nicole Gebler appears to have smelled something sour and asks, “Is this that awful 80’s movie?” Yep. But as the record indicates, the stage show’s much better.
SoLuna Studio is a vest pocket theater which has a sort of speakeasy feel. It’s almost as if viewing the performance in a venue that limits the audience to a relative handful of patrons, is somehow illicit. Indeed one might be forgiven if their initial impression is that they’ve dropped in on a cleaned-up stag party. “Xanadu” runs through May 25th.
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Award-winning Smithtown writer Jeb Ladouceur is the author of eight novels, and his theater reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. In Ladouceur’s next thriller, “Harvest” due in late summer, an American doctor is forced to perform illegal surgeries for a gang of vital organ traffickers in The Balkans.