Soon after opening night, the reviews came in. In their review, Variety singled out the actors for praise; Bowers performance "gets the angelic look, Australian accent and happy emptiness just right", Dustin James' turn as Beck/Sonny is credited as a "excellent comic turn, dippy and corny and laced with ideal timing" and Kenneth Alan Williams' Kelly/Maguire "keeps his chin forever angled upward, his teeth forever gleaming and his toes forever aching to twinkle."
Speaking of aching, the only negative comment the review mentioned (outside of spending the first paragraph disassembling the original movie), was the size of the theatre and it's stage, "There are moments when the show really wants to takes off into it's own world - but it doesn't have the room." But that didn't get in everybody else's way from enjoying the whole production.
Backstage.com's favorable review began with, " ...audience looking for a reason, any reason, to listen to the entire Xanadu soundtrack with like minded loonies, who also have an appreciation for a ironic loopy comedy, might just have found, in Xanadu Live!, the show they've been waiting for all their tortured dysfunctional lives." L. A. Weekly called the show "delightfully joyous and innocuous camp" and the production staff "brings a crisp professionalism to the proceedings."
Fans, of course, where overjoyed. Posting reviews on related internet sites, mainly gathered in the XL! fan site by Simonie Hodges, began to increase. Obviously without the objectivity that critics are known and paid for, the reviews were all great and the whole engagement more or less turned into a month long party and not just for the fans either.
There were subtle changes to the production during the month long duration, more notable were more sight gags and the music before and after the show were now ONJ and ELO hits from 1979.
Due to the resounding success, there was talk about extending the show just beyond the November 11th date, but underneath, the negocations weren't going very well. It got to the point when someone from the ELO camp requested that Ms. Hodges' unofficial XL! fan-site be taken down because they felt it was "antagonizing" that the site existed.
So the show was closed as originally planned and raised just under five thousand dollars for its charities. However, it really wasn't over just yet. About a month later, the productions props and script were sent to St. Louis for a weeklong engagement and, in June 2002, a "under the radar" benefit performance in Collinsville, Illinois.
Even though the whole production was a large financial loss for the couple/producers, Pietz looks back with little to no regrets. "It was worth it in many regards especially since it opened after 9/11," she had said recently, "and EVERYONE who came to the theatre including ourselves needed the joyous distraction."
Despite the anti-climatic ending, the shows engagement marked a small Xanadu resurgence, mainly with theatre screenings around the country. More prominate example was a Xanadu 'sing-a-long' screening as part of the 2002 OutFest, the Los Angeles Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, where the sold out engagement was populated with many dressing up as muses, Xanadu dancers and a small handful of Jeff Lynnes.
The event was even covered by the LA Times for a large Xanadu article that was published a week later. The show started off with a brief opening set by the Gay Men's Choir Of LA. Once the movie started, so did the party; cheers for Olivia' and Kelly's credits and a few boos when Beck's name first came up, shouts of 'Sugar Daddy' during scenes with Kelly and Beck and other playful cat calls that suggested a MST3K audition and the usual shouting of the lyrics, karaoke style!
One fan who had to miss the event was a major focus of the Times piece, Ken Anderson. He was too busy getting ready for his "Xanadu Extravaganza Weekend" at his aerobics studio in Santa Monica, CA. "It wasn't a good movie, by a long shot, even I knew that", Anderson remarked about the movie. "In retrospect I can't figure out what it was, but it had this huge, transcendent effect on me." A friend of Anderson who was serving as a master of ceremonies for Anderson remarked, "It's such a amazing thing, because what [Xanadu] is saying is anything can change somebody's life, anything can be your muse. And in Ken's case, it's true."
CHAPTER 6