The Midnight Train Crossing

The theatre was a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be. I was expecting something the size of the PAC, not Vogel hall.
We had fantastic seats though, third row on the side, and no one in front of us. We could also see over into the wings, but I didn't really pay that much attention to it once the show started.

The stage was pretty small too, relatively speaking. So now I understand what "Stage seating" meant - there were four "boxes" on the stage, with three rows of seats.
The people who were going to sit there filed in a few minutes before the show started, and the stage manager (I think), was talking to the people on stage - I suspect he was warning them.

There were three guys in the orchestra, and they were up on a platform stage left. They entered, climbing over various things and taking their positions.

A guy drifted out onto the stage, sort of wandering around in the back with a sheet of paper while the announcer came on. It was the standard announcement, but done in a valley girl voice.
Standard, that is, except for the last line: "And men's cut off shorts should be really short." The light came on the guy, who was indeed wearing really short cut off shorts.

That pretty much set the tone for the entire play - which is very very silly. And yes, a lot of it is on skates.

His name was Sonny Malone and he was the male lead of the show. He was played by Max Von Essen, who has a fantastic voice. He portrayed the surfer dude style of character very well.

He is upset because he is an artist, but he cannot create anything that he likes. Even his great chalk mural of the muses isn't quite right. He worked really hard on it too, he even took a book out of the library. So, he decides that the only thing to do is to kill himself.
Clio, head of the muses, comes to him to help inspire him. They come upon an old theatre - the Xanadu - and Sonny meets with the owner, Danny Maguire (Larry Marshall) to try and convince him to let Sonny use the theatre and turn it into a center for the arts.
Two of the muses are jealous of Clio, and they plot to make Clio and Sonny fall in love, which is forbidden. Then Clio gets called to Mt Olympus by Zeus (Also played by Larry Marshall) and everything gets resolved.
That's pretty much the plot.

We have Erato, muse of lyrics (Tallia Brinson), Thalia, muse of comedy (Jason Michael Snow), Euterpe, muse of music (JB Wing), Terpsicore, muse of dance (Julus Thomas III), Calliope, muse of epics (Joanna Glushak), Melpomene, muse of tragedy (Sharon Wilkins), and Clio, muse of history, and leader of the muses, played by Elizabeth Stanley. (That's seven people)

They dance around, singing the song "I'm Alive" as they celebrate their return to Earth, where they can do their work of inspiring artists.
Clio greets all nine of her sisters. The others are confused until she introduces the other two by pointing to the band: "Urania on keyboards and Polyhymnia on synth." The third guy, well that was just Bob.

I absolutely adored the muses - all of them. They were so funny to watch, and their way of speaking was fantastic. Sometimes, they would speak in classical sounding formal verse, mixed in with various and assorted slang words - often done in unison and very important sounding.

Melpomene and Calliope were the villains of the show - the "Evil Women."
I was really excited when I saw that Sharon Wilkins was playing Melpomene, mostly because I had heard of her before - from Suessical, and I thought it would be very cool to see her perform in something live. I was not disappointed!
In addition to being quite good villains, they were also very funny to watch.
After they plotted their evil scheme, Calliope started giggling and Melpomene scolded her - "We do not giggle - we cackle!" So off they went cackling.
Some of the best lines in the play belonged to those two.

Thalia and Terpsicore were probably the funniest though. Their presence led to a reoccurring joke.
Clio: "These are my sisters"
Other person looks at Thalia and Terpsicore, and then responds, "sisters?"

They also pulled double duty in other parts: Jason Michael Snow (Thalia) also played Eros - more commonly known as Cupid. He came out in shades and a traditional cupid outfit, complete with a very large bow.
He also came out with a Cyclops head during the scene on Mount Olympus.

Julus Thomas III(Terpsicore) played Hermes, messenger of the gods. He came in to deliver an important message to Clio, speaking in reverb. But then, when he had finished his message, he pretty much flounced off the stage.
During the Mount Olympus scene, he was a centaur, with an impressive costume. He did have hind legs that marched along behind him, puppet style.
In another scene, he did an elaborate tap dance routine that was very impressive.

From here, I'm just going to list some of the highlights in the show.

I liked the opening song of the muses, where Clio joyfully says that "It's the dawn of the 80s and they are in Venice! That's the perfect place"
Erato corrects her: Yes, they're in Venice, but Venice California, not Venice Italy, and it's the 1980s, not the 1780s.
They're all disappointed, but they decide to make the best of it.

Clio plans her disguise: She will call herself Kira, and she will wear roller skates and leg warmers and speak with a (bad) Australian accent. No one will recognize her.

After she meets up with Sonny, they find the theatre and he wants to find out who owns it.
"Oh if only there was some sort of magical book that listed all the businesses in town, and had their phone numbers, and is the color of amber," Kira laments.
Sonny gasps and rushes over to a phone booth, "A phone book!"

During the song "Suddenly", he calls Danny.
I liked this song for a couple of reasons - for one, it established this fun style of singing that Clio/Kira had, where she would be singing nicely, and then periodically half hiss/half growl out a word or two. It was funny.
They cleverly put Sonny on roller skates during this song too, since he was partially hidden inside of the phone booth for awhile.
It was cute, because he was skating around, very wobbly and half falling, and then she used her muse powers and he skated just fine.

Another cool song was "Dancin'", where Danny and Sonny discuss their conflicting ideas for the theatre.
Danny's verse are 40s night club style singers, and Sonny's are 80s rock, and the two blended so nicely together.
I like when songs of different styles are sung together - it adds emphasis to both of them.

Things can't be easy for Kira and Sonny of course - when he finds out that she's a muse, and that they've been cursed to fall in love since Eros fired arrows at them on Melpomene's bidding - he is a little uncertain of Kira.
She gets annoyed with him, and they sing the song "Fool", which had cool choreography.
In the previous song, "Don't Walk Away", Kira lost one of her roller skates, so she was sort of limping around. But during "Fool" she had the other muses helping her balance, and it just looked cool, as she sort of loomed over Sonny.
Sonny did not believe that the muses were from ancient Greece, and their response? "We speak in unison, what more proof do you need?" Yay ancient Greek choruses.

Kira/Clio returns to Mt Olympus on Pegasus. They had this winged horse that looked quite plastic, that she sat on and flew around the stage. It was so overly silly that it worked.

When she arrives at Mt Olympus, there is more double casting: we have Aphrodite (Joanna Glushak), Hera (Tallia Brinson) and Thetis (JB Wing).
Zeus hears Clio's story, and is annoyed that she broke the rules, but Thetis comes to her defense, saying that it was true love, and Zeus should honor that.
Kira could not have fallen in love with Sonny because of the curse. Thetis reminds Zeus that all demi-gods are dipped into the river Styx by their ankles, and Kira has been wearing legwarmers the whole show, so her ankles - her only vulnerable spot - were protected.
Then Sonny turns up - he climbed a ladder - to defend Clio. Zeus relents.
Melphomene is outraged, and she is sure that Calliope would be as well, were it not for the constraints of double casting - at which point Aphrodite hid behind the others.

In the final song, Xanadu, almost everyone was on skates, zipping around the stage, and there were many many disco balls that came down from the ceiling.

I mentioned the stage seating, and how I thought that the stage manager was warning the people that the cast was going to mess around with them. Well, they certainly did.
There were empty seats in the stage seating where the cast would periodically sit. At one point, Kira was skating around, and the other muses held up score cards.
At another point, during a high dramatic scene between Kira and Sonny, Melpomene and Calliope were sitting there with popcorn, sharing with the audience next to them.
There were a lot more, but those were the most memorable.

So, Xanadu is colorful and very very silly and I loved it.

After the show, we went to the Stage Door, and I met some of the cast. Click here to read about it and see some pictures.