Head Over Heels

Head Over Heels is sui generis.

I love that term, sui generis. It means it's totally unique, literally, "of its own kind." So many shows New Line has produced fit that description -- Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Bukowsical, Threepenny, Bat Boy, Urinetown, Yeast Nation, Assassins, Celebration, Lizzie, Jerry Springer the Opera, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Man of La Mancha, Spelling Bee, Floyd Collins, Hair, Forbidden Planet, Hedwig, Sunday in the Park... I could go on for days.

Head Over Heels is another one, and it's been such fun exploring it and figuring out what its rules are, how it operates, what its creators meant it to be. Like all those other shows I listed, Head Over Heels does not operate like any other musical. Its universe, its style, its content are all totally unique to this story.

We live in an age of mashup, the art of combining forms and content that shouldn't go together, to form something new that reveals interesting truths. Head Over Heels is one of the coolest, most interesting mashups I've yet encountered, slamming Elizabethan poetry up against 1980s punk-pop, and slamming them both up against the sexual and gender politics of today. It's a heady brew.

The result is breathtaking -- funny, shocking, ironic, surprising, ridiculous, revealing, smart, insightful, and deliciously goofy. Our story follows a clueless royal family comically stumbling and fumbling their way toward meaningful human connection, while navigating oracles, mystical (often singing and dancing) animals, and love in all its maddening complexity. This show follows Sondheim's Cardinal Rule -- Content Dictates Form. In other words, the story tells us how to tell it. In this world, love doesn't follow any normal rules, so neither does the show. Gender is nearly irrelevant here, and along with the royal family, we in the audience find many of our preconceptions and assumptions turned gleefully upside-down. But though sexuality permeates the plot, this isn't a story about sex; it's a story about connection and self-awareness -- and how one requires the other.

Only after these characters are able to reach some self-awareness are they able to connect meaningfully. And the road to that self-awareness is very painful for them and very, very funny for us. We can laugh at them partly because the show swims in irony, and that gives us some emotional distance. But also because we can all see ourselves and our own ridiculous blunders in the hilarious characters and actions on stage.

And in that recognition, we in the audience also achieve some amount of self-awareness and connection, along with the characters.

The show's writers, Jeff Whitty and James Magruder, have given us a clear road map to follow -- every assumption we have is up for grabs in this world. Our usual ideas about gay and straight, male and female, love and lust, beauty and attraction, are all enthusiastically upended. And that often delicious dissonance between the real world and the world of Head Over Heels is the source of lots of rich, insightful, human comedy.

Princess Pamela, our protagonist, embodies these contradictions and dissonances. She is literally perfect, and though she often talks about being better than other people, it's never mean-spirited or boastful; it's simply something that is a fact. And facts can't be good or bad; they're just facts. She feels enormous empathy for all the people who were not born as perfect as she is. She's reliably understanding and compassionate about the shortcomings of others, and when she feels obligated to explain those shortcomings to them, it's out of a spirit of the most earnest helpfulness, since they're obviously not as insightful or intelligent as she is. Pamela is profoundly humble about her perfection. She would never flaunt it or call attention to it in front of those less fortunate, unless they could perhaps benefit from her inspirational example.

Part of Pamela's perfection is that she is virtuous. But virtue in this pastoral Elizabethan world goes far beyond being pure or innocent. Virtue is about doing good in the world, with good intentions, making the world a better place, making other people's lives better, and more than anything, serving as an example of virtue and decency and humility, for the benefit of her inferiors. Pamela's life is in service to others.

She is hopelessly superior to everyone around her, and hopelessly self-aware of that superiority, all of which is a mighty responsibility for her (her great cross to bear!), but she accepts that huge load willingly -- because she's just that strong. Hers is a life dedicated to service, serving her fellow humans by enriching their world with the perfection of her presence, her friendship, her humor, her insights, and of course, her astounding talent at dancing, painting, poetry, needlework, and no doubt, multiple musical instruments.

Just looking at her lines, it would be easy to play Pamela as an arrogant bitch, but that would miss the larger context and story, and the larger point our story is making about assumptions. It's never safe to assume anything in this world. Anything.

One particularly revealing line comes early in the show, right before the song "Beautiful," when Pamela declares, "But my surface is what's Pamela!" Like in any hero myth story, Pamela has to learn something and "grow up" by the end of our story. In Head Over Heels, our hero has to learn that she's so much more than her surface, than her royal persona, than her "good example." Pamela has turned off much of her inner life long ago because it's too scary to acknowledge, and Mopsa helps her turn it back on and become a whole person.

We never know what's coming next in this show because this world operates so differently from ours. And even for those of us who know most of these Go-Go's songs, the way they're used is consistently surprising and assumption-busting. And that's the crazy fun of this adventure.

It wasn't all that long ago that catalog musicals (or jukebox musicals, as some folks call them) were a punch line. At their best, these shows were guilty pleasures. But Jersey Boys showed us a catalog musical can be well-structured, well-written, and ultimately, really great, serious musical theatre. Then Michael Mayer sort of became the Hal Prince of the catalog musical, as he expanded and enlivened the form with the brilliant American Idiot, Head Over Heels, and Jagged Little Pill. Since we already produced American Idiot in 2016, it's such fun to work on this show now, and see how this sub-sub-genre is evolving...

I want to leave you with an interesting riddle I heard back in college, that directly relates to some of the themes in our show. If you catch me in the lobby during our run, I'll tell you the answer. Here's the riddle.

A young man is brought into a hospital emergency room from a terrible car accident in which his father was killed. They rush him into emergency surgery, but the surgeon comes in, sees the boy, and says, "I can't operate on this boy -- this is my son!" How is this possible?

Ticket sales are really strong, so get your tickets now -- just click here! I can't wait to share this amazing, brilliant musical comedy with our audiences. You'll love it, I promise.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott