The Go-Go’s are on the go-go!
Reunited for the first time in years, the ’80s girl group performed to a packed house Monday night at the Bowery Ballroom. It was a kickoff party for their new musical, “Head Over Heels,” which, the Go-Go’s announced from the stage, will begin previews on Broadway in June at the Hudson Theatre.
The Post broke the news a few weeks ago, but we didn’t have the band on hand to electrify a young (by Broadway standards) crowd with a set that included “Vacation,” “Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Head Over Heels” and their biggest hit — “We Got the Beat.”
Lead singer Belinda Carlisle looked terrific singing in bare feet.
A confession: I wasn’t a Go-Go’s kind of guy in the ’80s. Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim and Dionne Warwick were on my turntable.
Call me Mr. Hip (Replacement).
But I had a blast Monday night bopping along with Go-Go’s fans Bevy Smith (of “Page Six TV”), the great Debbie Harry, Sandra Bernhard and Carla Gugino.
Producers Jordan Roth (majority owner of Jujamcyn Theaters), Carole Shorenstein Hays and Donovan Leitch were in the house as well.
Missing was another producer — Gwyneth Paltrow — but I’m told she’ll be around when the musical tries out at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco in April.
Tickets for the San Francisco engagement are going fast, sources say.
Once upon a time, the Go-Go’s would have partied into the night. But they were out of the Bowery Ballroom by 10 p.m. They were up early Tuesday to catch a flight to Miami, where they were set to perform on the beach that night at the Broadway Across America conference.
The most powerful theater owners and producers in the country go to the conference, and the Go-Go’s were there to impress them with “Head Over Heels” and — if the show’s a hit on Broadway — secure lucrative bookings across the country.
Insider buzz on “Head Over Heels” is strong. The show’s had a few workshops since it premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015. It’s gotten better each time, sources say.
It did hit a bump in the road when the original writer, Jeff Whitty, left the production. Whitty, who wrote the script to “Avenue Q,” is a talented writer. And at the Go-Go’s concert Monday night, people involved in the show told me much of his original script was “great fun” and “brilliantly theatrical.”
But it was long. “Head Over Heels” ran three hours in Oregon, prompting one of the Go-Go’s to remark, “I love the Go-Go’s. I’m in the Go-Go’s. But I can’t take three hours of the Go-Go’s.”
James Magruder stepped in to streamline the script, under the supervision of director Michael Mayer, who won the Tony for his terrific production of “Spring Awakening.”
While “Head Over Heels” uses Go-Go’s music, it’s not the band’s story. The show is based on “Arcadia,” a 16th-century prose poem by Sir Philip Sidney, and is set in a magical land of dukes, oracles, lions, bears — and more than a couple of cross-dressers.
“It’s sort of Mount Olympus meets the Forest of Arden,” says a source.
The cast includes Jeremy Kushnier, Taylor Iman Jones, Andrew Durand, Rachel York and Peppermint (of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” fame).
When the Go-Go’s pulled them up onstage during “Cool Jerk” on Monday night, the clock raced back to 1982 and we all had big hair and feathered bangs once more.
Writer Ken Ludwig was making notes over the weekend at backers’ auditions for “Crazy for You,” which won a Tony for Best Musical in 1992. The show, which features songs by George and Ira Gershwin, is slated for a Broadway revival next season, and Ludwig is punching up the script.
Director Susan Stroman recreated some of her sensational choreography from the original but came up with some showstopping new bits as well.
Tony Yazbeck did a killer tap dance on a grand piano, a source says. He had terrific chemistry with leading lady Laura Osnes.
The money’s in place, and now the hunt is on for a Broadway theater in the fall or late winter.