Jeff Whitty Speaks

[A Director]

From 2015 - Jeff Whitty spoke about Head Over Heels. I saw the production which was lots of fun and it didn't beat you over the head. Whitty considered the show a work in progress.  Too bad, Ms Paltrow and Company ruined it!

The play is about the clashing and blending of opposites in life and love. The king of Arcadia gets a bad oracle and seeks to overcome his fate with power and control.

He has two beloved daughters, Pamela (played by Bonnie Milligan) and Philoclea (Tala Ashe), one gorgeous, the other plain, but Whitty writes it so the plain one is loved for her beauty while the pretty one is overlooked.

“Everyone has obstacles to overcome,” says Whitty.

One of the girls is lesbian, but this, he notes, is a time when no one’s heard the word.

“It’s not preachy about that or anything. I let the audience play with it, so it’s their judgment,” he says.

“We made it so the show threatens to be adult and racy, but it doesn’t go all the way, so you can bring your 10-year-old child. If we get a complaint from someone that they heard a dirty word in their head, well, we can say, ?You must have a dirty mind, then,’ ” he jokes.

The message of this musical? There isn’t one, he says.

“My goal is not to send any message but to allow my audience to find the moral of the story themselves and really laugh hard and experience beauty and perhaps be touched if they’d allow it. Laughter shakes the bark off people.”

[Sondheimite]

I'm really happy this show is getting the karma it deserves after fvcking over Jeff

[BroadwayConcierge]

Sounds like it had a lot more potential earlier on before they went down this route. What happened to make Whitty part ways with the show?

[Sondheimite]

BroadwayConcierge said: "Sounds like it had a lot more potential earlier on before they went down this route. What happened to make Whitty part ways with the show?"

Jeff has been pretty vocal that he got fired from the project, sadly. 

[ScottyDoesn'tKnow2]

Can somebody be kind enough to summarize what happened to Jeff Whitty?

[Kad]

ScottyDoesn'tKnow2 said: "Can somebody be kind enough to summarize what happened to Jeff Whitty?"

Nobody on here can give a full account and it doesn't seem like either party is able to, either. I have heard it was a case of conflicting visions for the show moving forward and an unwillingness to compromise.

I imagine that Ed Iskandar, who was a friend of Whitty's, being fired from the Oregon Shakespeare production and helped develop the show did not help things from the get-go.

 

[A Director]

Ed Iskandar was fired shortly before Previews began because the show ran 4 hours and he refused to make any cuts.