‘Xanadu’ @ Uptown Players

Photos courtesy of Uptown Players

—Ryan Maffei

Here’s what I knew about Xanadu going into the opening performance of Uptown Players’ production last Friday night: 1) It’s a movie musical from 1980. As the show acknowledges, you can deduce a few artistic and stylistic things from it coming out that year. 2) Like Grease 2 or, I dunno, The Apple, it’s known as an artistic disaster that only putting on your “camp” goggles can ameliorate. 3) It starred Olivia Newton-John; ELO’s Jeff Lynne is responsible for some of the music (he was in his “maybe I could be Barry Gibb” phase), and god knows who else was involved.

But the original featured an old man stuck mentally and dialect-wise in the ‘40s, and I was horrified to discover in researching (after the Uptown show) that this man was played in 1980 by GENE KELLY. Testimonies I got from theatregoers familiar with the film had a light air of trauma. It not only won some Golden Raspberry awards but inspired the ceremony.

(I also knew about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Foster Kane, but let’s keep going.)

It's nicer sometimes to just imagine a brain-dissolving cultural insult than actually subject yourself to one, and I didn’t pop the movie on this weekend to compare (though I was until recently in the company of director Michael Serrecchia, who told Dallas Voice he also hadn’t seen Xanadu until after he’d started working on Uptown’s version). I wonder if only knowing vaguely that the original is a kitschy disaster might be an advantage.

This adaptation, which opened on Broadway in 2007, lets you see the source through a critical prism that protects you from secondhand embarrassment and firsthand misery. My companion, an alumnus of many Uptown shows (I was in one myself), told me at intermission he wasn’t entirely sure he got it. “Like, is it deep?” He’d been unsettled by the shambolic opening number, with its exaggerated dumb choreo (with streamers!) and smiles so wide you’re scared they’ll crack.

I told him, well yeah, in a way it is. Xanadu is a parody with just the right amount of affection for its source and its audience—a kind of peace summit between people who won’t get it and a movie that isn’t ready for them. Or, less loftily, it’s just so f**king funny. Comedy is hard, as they say, and because every line of dialogue is pushed through a filter that sends up each word, you’re watching actors do extremely intelligent work at multiple strenuous levels.

The show repeatedly, aptly razzes the state of the culture in the last two decades of the 20th century, a dire time to be sure, even if there’s always something fabulous growing underground. But now it’s 2025; we don’t have to romanticize the old days because we have hip-hop and electropop (and #BLM and #metoo)—and we miss Olivia Newton-John and forgive all her art crimes. You can laugh at and sigh nostalgically over leg warmers in the same breath.

Xanadu opens with the famously endearing Luke Weber sauntering onto the stage, and acknowledging (as well as gently insulting) the audience, in a bit of business a lot of actors would kill for in the first few minutes of a show. Weber is a master of something he did in Theatre Three’s Debbie Does Dallas, mixing heavy deadpan with spot-on sincerity where neither side fights for time. You need a smart actor who’s great at playing dumb in the part of Sonny Malorrrrrrn, someone you root for through every foolish move. Weber is very good at this kind of thing, one of those performers you adore on contact. He can also sing damn well, and he’s in excellent company in this production. I’m no authority on local musicals, but every person in this cast is phenomenally talented. (An actor blew her voice out early on, and still did earth-shattering things throughout the evening.)

Opposite Weber, and the show’s chief skater—the skating was minimal and it’s a shame, though the Kalita’s stage seems uniquely treacherous for it—is Ally Van Deuren as Clio, or “Ki-ra…” once she’s on earth, trilled in the same wide-eyed singsong each time. I can’t say enough about her work; I’d go with “worth the price of admission” if everyone else wasn’t incredible too. But Van Deuren has a very difficult job, on wheels no less, and she knocks it out of the park. Functionally playing three characters (though two are over-the-top disguises), Van Deuren makes expert use of a highly expressive face. Every second she’s doing or saying something you crack up at; it’s “mugging” as genius. But above all, her singing is top-notch. Multiple patrons remarked how dead-on her ON-J impression is, with uproarious tweaks of her distinctive phrasing and diction. And don’t get me started on her merciless faux-Aussie accent.

Bradley Campell winningly and poignantly plays Gene Kelly’s character, and Zeus (oh sorry, I haven’t done that DFW theatre critic thing of recapping the plot for you, but I promise you it’s better if you have no idea going in), another golden voice and a player of sharp comic sense. The rest of the company play Clio’s muse sisters. Tiana Shuntae Alexander gets to further the plot some as the show’s sort-of-antagonist. (“No, let us not giggle. Let us cackle!”) She’s brilliant, alone or alongside the equally sidesplitting Leslie Marie Collins. Gena Loe plays a ditz so over-the-top it’s practically performance art, Stephanie Felton commands the stage like she always does, Christopher Nguyen scores with both seriously good and deliberately awful dancing, and Landon Blanton crests with one of the show’s best-delivered zingers.

With the garish color palette and tragic aesthetic they have to draw upon, it could be said that Dennis Canright’s scenic design and Julie Simmons’ lighting design are understated. But they’re also very easy on the eyes, and that was probably the better choice—leave the savage stuff to the actors. Costume designer and local treasure Suzi Cranford checks the necessary boxes as artfully as ever; she lets the pieces make fun of themselves, going for accuracy instead of amping up the ridiculousness.

Michael B. Moore is who you want on hair and makeup for this, with Van Deuren’s wig the visual equivalent of what the actor is doing under it. Brian Christensen’s sound design also threads a tiny-eyed needle, needing to pull that magic trick of turning the repulsive palatable, but it clearly worked: I was bopping along all night. The fantastic Adam C. Wright leads a crack rock combo through these incisive maneuvers. Kennedy Smith (props) and Scott Guenther (multimedia) give the mural finishing touches.

It's especially important to shout out Kelly McCain’s choreography. In collaboration with the actors, McCain fills the stage with transcendent absurdity, and glues it together with plenty of unironic dynamite. (I know dynamite blows things apart, but all nouns that relate to “glue” are too low-key for my metaphor. So sue me, or give me a Razzie.) This includes not just skating that makes you go “oh wow!” but a great, calf-enflaming moment where Weber embodies every time an actor rolls toward the lip of the stage and you tense with concern. It’s hard—really hard—to do “bad” that good.

McCain is one of several artists involved in this amazingly rendered Pop piece of garbage whose work is a master-class in that bad/good balancing act. Surely some of it is a testament to Xanadu itself, and to the great justice Uptown has done to/for/upon it. But the Players have achieved something remarkable: they’ve turned Xanadu into high art.

WHEN: April 25–May 4, 2025
WHERE: Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd., Dallas
WEB: uptownplayers.org