Let's be honest, I am not a giant admirer of chutzpa. In my experience, Chutzpa often means not admitting failure - after that same failure becomes painfully obvious to everyone else.
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So it is with some trepidation that I say that you gotta admire the Chutzpa in putting Xanadu on stage.
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Some producer fell in love with one of the WORST movies ever (which brought a temporary end to Olivia Newton John's career, Steve Gutenberg's career and was the low light of poor Gene Kelley in his golden years). But in bringing it to Broadway he was brilliant.
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He added songs, left in the roller skates and removed bloat and the show is shorter than the movie (under 90 minutes) with no intermission so you can't think about how embarrassing it is that you are enjoying this.
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The show celebrates and jokes about its own shortcomings. Olivie Newton John's accent fades in and out throughout the movie? It does so in the show even more so. The bad-sister muses overact in the movie? On Broadway they screech, laugh, cast spells, make appallingly bad puns, play with the audiences hair and, quite literally in one case, chew the scenery. Steve Gutenberg wants to open a roller disco for no apparent reason in the film? On stage Chayanne wants to open a roller disco as a tribute to the arts of singing, dancing, stage and movement.
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But no one has seen the movie, and the playwright knows this. So the entire 1980's are sent up. It was the small window of a year when Flashdance was big, but new wave hadn't started yet. It was the year of Olivia NJ singing "We have to believe we are magic". It was, in short, one of the worst years ever for art, music, clothes and entertainment. If it wasn't for feathered back blond hair (circa Olivia Newton John and Heather Locklear 1.0) there would be no reason to even remember there was a 1980.
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And the musical was, for no reason I can put my finger on, awesome.