Have to Believe We Are Magic And Make Your Own Thursday Headlines

 

Via Giphy.

Notable Opening Nights returns with July 10, 2007, when Xanadu opened at what was then the Helen Hayes Theatre. It still exists, it's just known as the Hayes. That kind of silliness feels appropiate for Xanadu, which brought the 1980 Olivia Newton-John-Michael Beck-Gene Kelly so bad it's good flick to Broadway.

I'm going to level with you nice people. It's 10 p.m. Wednesday, July 9. I had intended to write my usual Notable Opening Nights essay, but I'm too tired. I'll give some quick facts:

1. Douglas Carter Beane followed his Tony-nominated play The Little Dog Laughed with his Tony-nominated book for Xanadu. In the cast album's liner notes, he talked about almost straying too far from the source material. Melpomene (Mary Testa) and Calliope (Jackie Hoffman), Beane's invention, nearly used their evil Muse power for the Iran-Contra deal. Beane followed up Xanadu with books for Sister Act, Lysistrata Jones, and Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella. All were Tony nominees, and all lost.

Courtesy YouTube.

2. Xanadu went zero for four at the 2008 Tonys, losing Best Musical and Best Choreography to In the Heights, Best Book of a Musical to Passing Strange, and Best Actress in a Musical to Gypsy. As of 2025, Kerry Butler (Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, Mean Girls, Beetlejuice) hasn't been nominated for another Tony, but I wouldn't count her out just yet.

Courtesy YouTube.

3. Cheyenne Jackson, who played Sonny, was hotter than Satan's stove in 2007. In case you didn't know.

Courtesy YouTube.

4. Xanadu wasn't Tony Roberts' return to Broadway, nor was it his last credit. It was his last time in the opening cast of a musical, and he took part in the 10-year reunion.

Courtesy YouTube.

5. Xanadu ran for more than 14 months at the (Helen) Hayes. It was an era when many Broadway musicals were trying to capture the success of The Producers. "'This is like children’s theater for 40-year-old gay people!' cracks Ms. Hoffman’s Calliope at one point, and she (or rather Mr. Beane) is only half-kidding," Charles Isherwood observed in a "Critic's Pick" review for The New York Times. "But that acidic epithet could be used to describe far too many more earnest Broadway duds of recent vintage. At least Xanadu is in on the joke."

Courtesy YouTube.

Next week, a one-woman show that could have used another woman.