Play Review: XANADU!

It was an excruciating experience sitting through this play. It was…well, it tried to be a comedy, but it fell flat, much like the actors trying to roller-skate around the place.
The actors seemed tired, and their performances lacked spirit, perhaps because of the catastrophic loss of self respect of having to act in this play. The dancing was poorly choreographed, boring, and unpracticed. The characters were able to sing fairly well, but the dances going with the songs were full of mistakes, mess-ups, and miscues. Frankly, it was a little embarrassing. There was also a character completely missing from one scene, and the actor who played her partner tried to complete the scene through improvisation. It was a valiant effort, but she accidentally turned to the missing partner and asked for her opinion near the end of the scene, and then sheepishly tried to play it off as a joke. The actors who played Sonny Malone, the main character who wishes to construct a roller disco, and Danny Mcguire, the real-estate mogul that Sonny tries to buy the establishment meant to house the disco in, were the stand-out performances of the night, but that isn’t saying much, to be perfectly honest.
The plot of the play is a nonsensical mish-mash of inaccurate, stereotypical caricatures of ancient Grecian mythology and 80’s pop-culture references and phrases that, while made to be silly and over the top, just seems dry and soulless with the tired performances of most of the cast. A synopsis: Sonny Malone, a struggling artist, draws a sidewalk mural of the Greek muses, and then decides to kill himself because he’s unsatisfied with his lack of artistic talent and, presumably, to get out of this farce of a play (I don’t blame him). Klio asks Zeus if she and her 8 sisters (two of which are very burly men in drag) can go down and help him. He agrees, her sisters (a large, soulful black woman and an annoying, mousy white woman) are jealous that Zeus favors her since she’s the youngest and gets the unexplained ‘Xanadu’, so they decide to cause hilarious mischief. She stops Sonny from killing himself, finds him a theater by the name of-wait for it-Xanadu. He goes to work out a deal for the theater with the owner of the property, Danny McGuire. He explains that he wants the theater for free, and Danny very reasonably tells him that he’s insane. Klio, now named ‘Kira’, because it’s ‘modern and normal’, comes in, and Danny freaks out, recognizing her from his past. As it turns out, Kira had done this little mortal thing more than once, and had an affair with Danny decades before. She had left him then because he wanted to make money instead of make more art, and he regrets it deeply. So, he lets them have the theater with the condition that they have to fix it up by the next night. They work through the night, Kira falls for Sonny and draws due to her evil sister’s influences, both of which are taboos for Muses, and they finish by the time Danny gets back. Danny is impressed and opens the theater, Kira decides she has to leave because of her budding romance, and the sisters give Danny money to tear down the theater, and he complies. Kira tells Sonny she’s a muse, he, again very reasonably, calls her crazy, she gets mad, and then goes back to Mount Olympus to face Zeus for her mistakes. Zeus is very angry, but his many wives tell him to…mellow out. Seriously. Meanwhile, Danny and Sonny, having seen Clio flying away back to Greece, realize that she really is a muse. Danny tells Sonny to go after her and not make the same mistakes he made, and promptly leaves to go cancel the destruction of the building, and Sonny heads to Greece. Zeus decides that it’s ok for her to return and become a mortal, but then Sonny comes from backstage and tells Klio that she loves him and challenges Zeus to take her away from him. This impresses Zeus and he lets them go, saying that Xanadu, his gift to Clio, is the ability to love and create art. They head back to L.A., have a final dance number, and then the play ends.
That’s it, really. There is no deeper meanings, themes, examples of the human condition, foreshadowing, rising action, or logical conclusion of this play. It’s a series of 80’s jokes and references tied weakly together with a terrible story about the Greek Gods. It was a terrible play to review for the class as there were so few examples of dramatic structure or themes or the human condition. The play was meant to be a fun, ironic Broadway hit that didn’t take itself seriously and was just made to make you laugh. Well, it didn’t take itself seriously, and neither did the audience. The jokes were awful and their timing so botched and forced, it really incited more jeering guffaws at the play’s expense than lighthearted chuckles at the antics of the characters onstage. I apologize for the lack of substance, and sincerely wish I had gone to A Christmas Carol instead of trying something new.