"Feels as timid and awkward as the new kid on the first day of school...'Head Over Heels' lacks the courage of its contradictions. It mutters deferentially when what you want is a rebel yell...What’s lacking in the musical performances here is the go-for-broke exuberance that made the Go-Go’s so irresistible...Its audience might leave the theater less hungry if this oddly earnest show could really kick up its heels and let the message take care of itself."
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"To enjoy 'Head Over Heels,' which offers quite a lot to enjoy, it is probably best to kick up your heels and put your head on hold. That’s not to say that this saucy, boisterous musical doesn’t have a brainy side, starting with its ambitious crossbreeding of four time periods...But at heart the show is a campy romp...Broadway traditionalists may not approve, but that feels like part of the point...A fantasy and celebration of nonconformity, and it puts its casting where its mouth is."
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"If the premise of 'Head Over Heels' sounds a little nutso, that’s because the show is a lot nutso, in the most delightfully daffy, exuberantly heart-open way...'Head Over Heels' is joyfully queering the canon (which isn’t all that straight to begin with) and throwing a heady, hearty party while it’s at it...Part of the appeal of 'Head Over Heels' is that while it’s got Broadway sparkle to it, it depends almost entirely on its ensemble to generate its goofy, big-hearted brand of magic."
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“A bouncy, bizarro, occasionally didactic musical...The amalgam is so brazen as to be immediately disarming: it would take a truly bad sport not to get on board with ersatz Elizabethan verse side by side with eighties earworms, delivered with equal gusto by a game cast...Mayer’s production revels in postmodern whimsy...The familiar tunes give the tale a welcome infusion of nostalgia...but the catalogue is puddle-deep."
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"The book is still a sophomoric mess, and the 17 songs, which are mostly either fast or rather less so, are lively but unvaried...Michael Mayer has done what he can to put a directorial shine on 'Head Over Heels'...Everyone else in the cast takes care of business, and if you really, really like the Go-Go’s, you might possibly find the results tolerable."
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"'Head Over Heels' just strikes as winking and self-satisfied, occasionally amusing, occasionally cloying...For a show that is so determined to transcend convention, 'Head Over Heels' feels predicable from start to finish...'Head Over Heels' offers up a few surprises...But the biggest surprise is an unfortunate one: The Go-Go’s songs don’t hold up all that well."
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"An over-written, over-designed, and generally overdone production...Thanks, no doubt, to the Oracle of Delphi (played here by the impishly funny Peppermint), it’s a miracle that at least some of the wit in Jeff Whitty’s original book gets through...The show never recovers from the pervasive feeling of exhaustion. There’s the exertion of making the stilted Spencer Liff choreography seem vaguely vogue. There’s the constant struggle to push and shove songs into places where they don’t fit."
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"Relentlessly frothy musical...You'll either find the humor uproarious fun or, like me, an utter trial...The performers certainly give the material their all...Mayer's blithe staging keeps things moving at a fast pace...Despite the ample professionalism on display, the show comes across as painfully strained rather than pleasurably antic. 'Head Over Heels' may be admirably woke when it comes to gender fluidity, but as entertainment, it's strictly retrograde."
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