Xanadu

Fio and Husband attended the opening night of the Georgetown Palace Theater's  presentation of Xanadu, a musical based on the 1980s film about a roller-skating Greek muse who falls in love with a hippie artist on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

Opening nights are usually plagued with glitches, but not this time.  The double- and triple-cast actors were terrific, Kyle Kirkhoff and Sara Burke, the leads, were the definition of perfection, while second leads Scott Shipman and Gazelle Garcia have voices to die for.  Fio was especially drawn to dancer Leslie R. Hethcox, whose every move was grace.

The costumes were right on, the sparse sets worked, and the choreography was a knock-out.

But Fio didn't like the play, which reminded her of the over-the-top playlets she wrote in high school. And she didn't like sitting in the third row with first nighters yelling in-jokes back and forth before the play began, after it ended, and during intermissions. And she had a headache.  And she doesn't like the director, who never answered her request for a tour of the theater when WHERE THE HEART LEADS was in the works.

But, other than those things, the show was okay.