Head Over Heels at The Umbrella Arts Center

April 15 - May 8, 2022 (no performance 4/17)
Shows on Fridays & Saturdays 8PM; Sundays 3PM
Adapted by James Magruder
Concept and Original Book by James Whitty
Music by The Go-Go's
Directed by Brian Boruta

The Umbrella Stage Company welcomes audiences back with the high-spirited musical, Head Over Heels (April 15 – May 8, 2022), fueled by the music of the newly minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, The Go-Go’s.

Called “a hilarious, exuberant celebration of love and beauty in its infinite varieties,” (EW) this laugh-out-loud love story was created by the visionaries behind recent Umbrella favorites, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Avenue Q.

A gleeful mash-up of a Tudor-period court drama and 80s pop-punk jukebox, the show follows the escapades of a royal family and their subjects driven by a prophecy on an outrageous journey to save their beloved kingdom from extinction—from losing its “Beat”.

The characters’ explorations of gender-fluidity, sexual awakening, beauty and acceptance take the audience on a hilarious series of adventures and entanglements set to such infectious hit songs as “We Got the Beat,” “Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Vacation,” “Heaven is a Place on Earth” and “Mad About You”. Along the way, they discover the key to their realm’s survival lies not out there – but within each of their own hearts.

Directed by Umbrella Stage Company Producing Artistic Director Brian Boruta, with music directed by David Wright and choreography by Lara Finn, the show “is nothing short of pure joy on stage. It is bright, it is bold, and it is unabashedly brave in its celebration of love and identity.”

The cast includes Temma Beaudreau, John Breen, Kai Clifton, H.C. Lee, Erica Lundin, Ashley Nicole Martin, Katie Pickett, Isabella Rivera, David Rodrigues, Bri Ryder, Lillian Salazar, Robert Saoud*, Hannah Shihdanian, and Damon Singletary*.

The Umbrella Stage Company has earned audiences’ trust for its rigorous COVID safety measures, and will continue to closely follow or exceed public health guidelines for the protection and comfort of its artists and attendees. The Umbrella is ADA-accessible, LGBTQ-friendly with marked all-gender bathrooms available, and a proud partner in the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Card-to-Culture Program. Tickets $15-$44 at http://TheUmbrellaArts.org/BoxOffice

Authors

• Albert T. Viola
• Ben Hecht
• Edgar Allan Woolf
• James Magruder
• Jeff Whitty
• Jerome Kern
• Kenneth Sawyer Goodman
• William S. Kilborne Jr.
• William S. Kilborne, Jr.