Reviewed by Dr. Tiffany Knight Raymond, PhD, and Theron Raymond (seventh grade)
Head Over Heels is the finale in Pitt’s transformations-themed 2025-26 theatre season. Consciously or not, this season’s theme and rainbowed logo carry political valence.
This 2015 musical is, aptly enough, comprised of strange bedfellows. It combines Sir Philip Sidney’s 1580 work, Arcadia, with the 1980’s smash hit oeuvre of The Go-Go’s.
While separated by four hundred years, both Sidney and The Go-Go’s endure as trailblazers, making this multi-century-spanning pairing complementary rather than clashing. I still remember reading Sidney as an undergraduate English major in Brit lit I and being impressed with how contemporary this Shakespearean contemporary was. Sidney’s 1580 Arcadia was genre-bending. It was both prose and poem, and it’s considered the precursor to what we take for granted as the novel. In fact, Sidney invented the name Pamela in Arcadia. Author Samuel Richardson subsequently chose this name for his 1740 work, Pamela, which is considered the first modern novel.
As for The Go-Go’s, they burst from L.A.’s 1970’s punk scene and emerged as the first all-female band to write their own songs and play their own instruments. They skyrocketed to fame with hits like “We Got the Beat.” Their agency over their careers as women was gender-bending.
With Head Over Heels, director Kelly Trumbull consciously pulls Sidney and The Go-Go’s into the 21st century while paying homage to a past that pre-dates them both by a millennium. The plot is Oedipal in the sense that it centers around the attempt to evade a prophecy – or rather, four prophecies.
The opening song is “We Got the Beat,” which establishes an ensemble energy that choreographer Dr. Amanda Olmstead expertly guides and never diminishes. Gianni Downs’ set design is elegantly modern and symmetrical. It towers upward, and steps sweep up the opposing sides that are connected by a bridge. In the opening number, the in-sync ensemble fills the stage while Queen Gynecia (Ellie Tongel) and King Basilius (John Papadimitriou) participate from above. They look down on their subjects, reinforcing hierarchy and societal norms. The bridge is narrow while the stage is wide, visually reminding us there is only so much room at the top.
King Basilius’s confidence that he can beat the prophecies is an eyeroll-worthy textbook stereotype of royal male hubris that John Papadimitriou brings to life without making the king a caricature. Papadimitriou ventures with his manservant, Dametus (Ben Stolarz), to consult with the Oracle. The visit is sparked by the receipt of a message delivered by a serpent. Props manager, Bridgette Dona, and her team of artisans construct a snake puppet that’s worthy of a Lunar New Year parade with multiple people personing the serpent’s movement. A scrolled message drops from the serpent’s unfurling red tongue. The message is a harbinger that the kingdom’s “beat” is under threat.
Ava Kobulnicky effortlessly commands as the oracle, Pythio. When the king inquires about the oracle’s gender, Kobulnicky assertively snaps back with “How is gender germane to this discussion?” Costume designer KJ Gilmer establishes Pythio’s dominance with costumes that wow. Pythio evolves from luminescent serpent to an owl-inspired assemblage to a glimmering Emerald City-appropriate ophidian mosaic with statement sleeves that mirror the hooding of a cobra. Kobulnicky brings them to life with an indomitable, unrushed stage presence.
Like all prophecies, Pythio’s are vague but are interpreted negatively, inspiring a frenzied panic. While the king chooses not to share the specifics, he immediately shuttles his family from the city of Arcadia into the woods. The woods often symbolize freedom from regular constraints, and this musical takes that to an extreme, making the king’s attempt to escape the prophecies the very thing that allows them to flourish.
The play also opens with the king’s attempt to marry off his eldest daughter, Princess Pamela (Olivia Tran-Speros). Tran-Speros exudes a withering disdain as she scans season five of suitors, dismissing them with the flick of a royal wrist and pronouncing, “suitors do not suit and now must go.” The attempts to dodge the prophecy allow each character’s evolution without feeling forced, and Pamela’s one-dimensional spoiled princess of renowned beauty proves to be deeper.
If one sister is the beauty, the laws of siblings say the other must be plain, and such is the case with the younger sister, Philoclea (Holly Egbert). She is in love with the shepherd, Musidorus (Seamus McGroary), whom the king deems beneath her station and therefore an unsuitable suitor. After he’s denied, McGroary memorably belts out “Mad About You” with his sheep as backup dancers, affirming his resolve to pursue his love. He takes on a disguise to follow the royal family into the woods. This disguise becomes a lynchpin in the unfolding of the prophecies, and the dropping of literal and metaphorical disguises becomes a key theme of the play.
Head Over Heels ends not as a rainbowed logo, but a queer-inclusive affirmation of human storytelling. What we like to think of as modern is in fact ancient. Humans of all genders have been finding and exploring ways to love each other across time and space, and this story celebrates love in all its forms. We are as modern as we are in the past and future, and there’s comfort and solidarity in that continuity. Or, to summarize Sidney (via The Go-Go’s), “Beautiful is all I see when I look at me.”
-TKR, Ph.D. & TR
The University of Pittsburgh’s production of Head Over Heels runs through April 19, 2026, on the Pitt campus at the Charity Randall Theatre, 4301 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Purchase tickets online here.
