Review: David Byrnes Imelda Marcos musical 'Here Lies Love" gets a thoughtful makeover at the Taper

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

Imelda Marcos’ fetish for fiendishly expensive shoes was a running gag in the 1980s.But did you know that she was also something of a disco queen?The image of a jet-setting Marcos in her Beltrami pumps boogieing with arms dealers at fashionable New York nightspots is one of the inspirations of David Byrne’s musical about the notorious former first lady of the Philippines, who sang on the campaign trail for her husband, Ferdinand E.

Marcos, and ruled with an iron fist alongside him after he declared martial law and plunged his nation into a brutal dictatorship.“Here Lies Love,” which is having its Los Angeles premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, traces the political power couple’s rise and fall through a series of dance cuts that capture the irrational hold charismatic leaders can have on a public — at least while the music is blasting.Byrne, the ingenious Talking Heads co-founder, conceived the show and wrote the music and lyrics.

Fatboy Slim, a Grammy Award-winning DJ, musician and record producer, contributed to the music.The score, a mix of lush disco and synth pop with hints of island breezes and karaoke camp, brings a club-like energy to the stage.

I first saw “Here Lies Love” at New York’s Public Theater in 2013, when the production, directed by Alex Timbers, was staged as an immersive dance party.Audience members moved along a shifting dance floor as the love story between Imelda, a beauty queen from the provinces, and Ferdinand, an ambitious senator accustomed to getting what he wants, sourly played out amid the backdrop of a traumatic national story.This sung-through musical pulled off something of a coup of its own.

As Ferdinand, now president and philandering husband, and Imelda, his embittered wife dripping in compensatory luxury, shore up their “conjugal dictatorship,” theatergoers discovered that, while partying to the seductive beat, a politic...