‘Here Lies Love’ review: David Byrne musical makes Broadway a nightclub

Call it Studio 53. 

For the Imelda Marcos bio-musical “Here Lies Love,” which opened Thursday night a block away from the nightclub-turned-venue Studio 54, the Broadway Theatre has been transformed into a sexy discotheque. 

All 900 of the orchestra seats have been ripped out and replaced by a dance floor, where throngs of people groove to the music of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim while the life story of the controversial former first lady of the Philippines unfolds around them.

(There are seats in the balcony and on the side for those who are not quite ready for their close-up.) 

At first the shimmering redesign is overwhelming to take in — an impressive feat of invention from set designer David Korins that houses an undeniably enjoyable show about a dictator’s wife living lavishly in full view of her suffering people.

The room we not so long ago watched “West Side Story” and “Fiddler on the Roof” in is totally unrecognizable.

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Once we’re acclimated to the changed space, however, we start to ask more of the story. Broadway, after all, is a vastly different place than the Public Theater where I first saw the musical in the smaller LuEsther Hall 10 years ago and liked it a hair more. Some of the intimate downtown charm of the immersive show has not made the trek from Eighth Street to one of Midtown’s biggest houses. 

And standing in the theater that once hosted the original production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” — a similar story about Argentina’s power-hungry first lady Eva Peron — makes you crave a stronger point of view on Marcos, rather than just an excuse for party time. The musical, somewhat shallowly, paints the woman as a kindly victim who was swept up by the decadence and momentum as much as we are.

That aside, it is indeed awfully easy to lose yourself to the glamorous escape that director Alex Timbers (“Moulin Rouge”) and his team have so splendidly built, accompanied by a devilishly catchy score.

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“Here Lies Love” — the phrase now-94-year-old Marcos has said she wants engraved on her headstone — jauntily traces Imelda’s (Arielle Jacobs) origins from a little girl who wore “hand-me-downs and scraps” after her family’s fortune dried up to a hot-button international icon. 

She becomes a beauty pageant contestant and dates promising politician Ninoy Aquino (the always excellent Conrad Ricamora), who gets the audience chanting “Give our people a break!”

Aquino’s music has the most recognizably “Talking Heads” sound of Byrne’s score, particularly the haunting spoken-word number “The Fabulous One,” and Ricamora has the ideal stump-speech voice to sell it.

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Imelda then catches the eye of rising star Ferdinand Marcos (Jose Llana). They marry and he wins the 1965 presidential election, in part thanks to his new wife’s soaring popularity.

The zippy, fairytale first half is told entirely in pulsing music — and no spoken scenes — with the vibe of a fashion week runway, as the fabulous cast struts and dances up and down elevated catwalks. The stages rotate and the standing audience moves around with them. All the while, we become the citizens and cameras film us shaking hands with Ferdinand and Imelda at spirited rallies.

Then the smile fades, and the songs become less chipper, as Imelda’s out-of-control spending is criticized (a massively expensive cultural center, 3,000 pairs of shoes) and greedy Ferdinand declares martial law to keep his perch.

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Lea Salonga, as Aquino’s mother, has a powerful ballad that’s a grounded break from all the mania.

Jacobs shines (with the help of Justin Townsend’s dazzling, club-drug lighting) best as Imelda in her early optimistic days, carefree and rainbow high. Her pure singing voice radiates possibility and that titular “Love.”

The actress is not quite as formidable when Imelda becomes the grandiose woman the world is now familiar with, and is forced to confront the darkness of her husband’s extra-marital affair and the People’s Power Revolution of 1986.

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Still, even if “Here Lies Love” doesn’t reach the emotional highs of “Evita” (one reason it can’t is that, unlike Eva Peron, Marcos is alive and well and with a son, Bongbong, who’s the current president of the Philippines), it’s a ravishing sensory experience unlike any other. 

You’ll walk out at the end with no changed opinion of Imelda Marcos, but instead with your eyes opened about the endless possibilities for Broadway theaters.