Darkest Suburbia...and Beyond!

I am a late, late, latecomer to the phenomenon of binge-watching. In part, it was a matter of access; I refused to jump on the pay-TV bandwagon for simply decades, until forced by the demise of a second-tier Internet provider to switch to cable. Even then, I resisted. But in the last year or so, and particularly since moving to my present corner of Darkest Suburbia™ (where it's been not merely possible but preferable to get most of my TV via streaming), I have succumbed on occasion to the siren call of mainlining a whole season of something all at once.

However.

Even in my assimilation, I am an outlier. I have not inhaled the addiction that is Game of Thrones (HBO itself is not my jam). I have not drunk the Kool-Aid that is The Mandalorian. (I actually do have Disney+, but while I like the Star Wars franchise in general - okay, except for the prequel trilogy - it's at best a second-string favorite to other series. I'll get there one of these days, just not yet.)  I am years behind on the various "Arrowverse" series. I have not sat through the epic that is Survivor (I am mostly a really hard sell for reality TV - traditional game shows, mostly yes; dysfunctional group-therapy exercises, hard NO).

So what did I spend most of a weekend watching just last month?

That would be Encore, a Disney+ original reality series (!) that's all about - surprise - musical theater. I am nothing if not a lifelong theater nut in general and a musical theater nut in particular, and the discovery that someone had made a reality show about re-enacting high school musicals was pretty much guaranteed to ping my "must watch" radar. Nor did it hurt that one of my favorite actors - Kristen Bell - is both nominal host and one of the executive producers.

Encore's premise is straightforward: track down the half-dozen or so leads of a particular high school's musical theater production from a particular year, anywhere from a decade to almost a half-century after the fact, and lure them back to said high school to put on a fast-tracked one-night revival of that same show. The production window is short: five days' preparation from launch to overture. This is made practical because the series producers supply the remaining 95% of the necessary labor (including actual Broadway-veteran directors, choreographers, and music coaches) plus a professional ensemble (often hired locally) to fill out the cast. The reunited performers get a trip down memory lane, and viewers get a crisp, authentic behind-the-scenes view of how each episode's production comes together. Most of the resulting shows are staged right back at the original high school theater, though one or two make use of a nearby local theater. In one case, where the high school in question had closed, the next-nearest high school stage stood in for the original.

Because each episode runs just under an hour, what you get of the actual score from each selected musical is limited, but there's always enough to get the flavor of each show across. There's a nice balance of variety and continuity in the production process. In some cases the high school performers reprise their original parts, while in others they take on different roles. Each episode makes use of a unique trio of directors, but several of the directors and choreographers recur three or four times during the 12-episode season. And there's often a guest with specific connections to the relevant show's Broadway run - Broadway's original Belle turns up for Beauty and the Beast, songwriter Stephen Schwartz is on hand for Pippin, and the guest director for Ragtime was, in fact, the Tony-nominated director of the show's 2010 Broadway revival.

Because this is reality TV, part of each episode involves our leads reflecting on their lives then and now, but while some of the journeys involve a degree of emotional pain, all are ultimately optimistic in the old-school Disney mode. Because this is a high-school reunion exercise, the producers have hunted down archival video of the original productions, so you get to see - sometimes side by side - the principals as kids and as adults. And because this is an absurdly ambitious way to produce a musical, there's a degree of cheerful Muppet-like chaos that's always making itself felt.

The selection of shows is more diverse than you might expect from a Disney-backed venture - yes, they've got Beauty and the Beast and High School Musical, but also represented are Anything Goes, Godspell, and the aforementioned Ragtime. At one 12-episode season, this is a fairly short binge - and may well be all we get, given both the present limits imposed by the pandemic and the long-term changes likely for live theater in general going forward. I'd be glad to see more - but I'm delighted to have this much, and I recommend the series to anyone with any interest at all in musical theater. 

Strictly speaking, in one respect I am totally the wrong target audience for Head Over Heels, as prior to viewing this musical I couldn't have told you that the Go-Gos were, in fact, a genuine (and highly successful) '80s rock group.  Nor, despite having been the archetypical liberal arts English major back in the day, had I taken more than a passing glance at any of the versions of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.  And if you'd told me that someone had decided to fuse the Arcadia and a whole catalog of Go-Gos music into a rock musical, I'd probably have asked you what you were smoking.

I am now here to tell you that someone has done exactly this, and that the result is, to apply an over-used but apt modern superlative, awesome -- and I use that term in its classic sense, of "something which inspires awe".  I should add that where theater is concerned, I am not easy to awe.  Specifically, the librettist for Head Over Heels is Jeff Whitty, perhaps best known as the father of the Tony-winning Avenue Q, which may go some way toward explaining why this show actually works.

I'm not even going to try to explain the plot (such as it is), except to observe that it is (a) in the broad general neighborhood of Shakespeare's more convoluted comedies and late romances -- it is perhaps not a coincidence that OSF is also producing Pericles Prince of Tyre this year -- and (b) also in the broad general neighborhood of the two stage adaptations of classic Marx Brothers movies OSF has produced recently.  What's of greater importance is the degree to which the show doesn't merely play with the metaphorical "fourth wall", but gleefully tunnels right through it into the audience.  And that's no metaphor -- John Tufts, as a classic Shakespeare-league Fool crossed with the Leading Player in Pippin (and this show's nominal master of ceremonies), spent part of the intermission strolling through the house, plopping briefly down in one of the best seats in the theater while talking casually to various audience members.  At least half the cast began the evening by stationing themselves at intervals throughout the aisles several minutes before curtain time; I realized this when I looked up from my playbill, noticed an eight-foot pool of purple skirt stretched across the concrete behind me, and realized that the animated (and entirely off-the-cuff) conversation I'd been overhearing from the next row back was taking place between one lady in the aisle seat and one of the principal female players.

And it only got wilder from there.  When curtain time did arrive, Tufts strode out to center stage and introduced himself -- both as himself and as his character -- then went on to do the same for several of the leading performers.  Then there was the Oracle of Delphi, who admitted that her gift of prophecy was made possible because she was reading ahead in the script.  (Yes, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem got there first in the original Muppet Movie, but Whitty and the Oracle -- later to be known as Linda -- promote the shtick from an amusing throwaway gag to a key plot and thematic point near the climax.)

What prompts the occurrence of awe, though, is that all of the Shakespeare-grade romantic foolery (including lots of gender-bending) and fourth-wall insanity is wrapped in a 24-karat Rock Musical soundtrack.  As I noted earlier, this was my very first encounter with Go-Gos music, and while '80s girl-group rock is not at all my usual beat, it was impossible not to be drawn in by the energy and vigor of the songs.  My only frustration is that the enthusiasm of the orchestra occasionally overrode the vocals during musical numbers, making it difficult to make out lyrics, but that was only an intermittent issue.

Verdict?  If you are a fan of any one subset of the source material (Whitty, Philip Sidney, Shakespearean comedy, rock musicals, etc.), this is a must-see.  And there may be a bonus bit of off-the-wall resonance for the genre-fiction fans in the gallery.  It occurs to me that Head Over Heels -- and the Go-Gos sound -- blends '80s rock and fantastical elements in a way that fans of Seanan McGuire's music may find especially appealing.  And in the reverse context, one of the more memorable performances in the show -- the role of Princess Pamela -- comes from actress Bonnie Milligan, whom I'd argue is a passable ringer for Seanan....

Back tonight from the annual pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival via the usual college alumni tour.  A very good year, all told; of the five shows we saw, I count one as superlative, three as excellent, and one as...let's say adequate.  The notes are below, cut-tagged to avoid taking up excess screen space.  Note that the clips you see following each title come from the end, not the beginning, of my play-by-play remarks.

( Friday night: Merchant of Venice )  While others in our tour group had issues with particular aspects, most of them seemed to like this staging better than I did.

( Saturday afternoon: She Loves Me )This one gets six stars out of five from me; it's that good.  OSF audiences have been getting much too generous with their standing ovations in recent years, but this staging deserved the one it got from us.

( Saturday evening: Hamlet )  All in all, this may be the most accessible staging I've seen in years while retaining every bit of the play's depth and nuance, and if it doesn't quite reach all the way to "brilliant", it doesn't miss that level by much.

( Sunday afternoon: Throne of Blood )If you're mostly a Shakespeare buff (as I am), this is a fascinating and highly effective novelty.  If you are any sort of Kurosawa buff (as it happens, I'm not), this is likely a rare and not-to-be-missed work of wonder.  Note that once this show finishes its run in Ashland, it's traveling to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in NYC for a week's run in November, as part of the Next Wave Festival [this link loads a short video featuring Ping Chong].

( Sunday evening: Henry IV, Part I )  I count this the best Shakespeare we saw during the weekend, albeit very narrowly over Hamlet.