The music was memorable. The cast was respectable. The roller skates were adorable. The story was deplorable.

As a movie, 1980's “Xanadu” had a few things going for it. Actual cinematic quality was not one of them. Though diehard fans might get their leg warmers in a bunch at this suggestion, the hard truth is: “Xanadu” was a Xana-dud.

Then, something magical happened, more magical even than the blinding whiteness of star Olivia Newton-John's teeth. Nearly three decades after the movie came and went, some enterprising theater types cobbled together the movie's songs and a few loose plot threads (the only kind the film had, actually) into a Broadway musical.

DETAILS “Xanadu” La Jolla Playhouse When: Now in previews; opens Nov. 23, then Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m.; Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Where: Mandell Weiss Theatre at La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla Tickets: $42-$75 Phone: (858) 550-1010 Online: lajollaplayhouse.org

They must've had more savvy muses than the low-rent Greek goddesses their show portrays, because the new “Xanadu” turned into a Tony-nominated hit. And though it closed last month on Broadway after a year-plus run, the show is about to see new life, with a touring version that launches this week at La Jolla Playhouse.

The show is a lot more faithful to the original music – half of it by the Electric Light Orchestra, the other half by Newton-John's longtime producer and songwriter, John Farrar – than it is to just about anything else connected with the film.

“I loved that (soundtrack) album as a teenager, so the music really sounds like the original music,” says Christopher Ashley, who was just beginning to direct “Xanadu” for Broadway when he was hired as the Playhouse's artistic director last year.

“But all we really kept from the plot of the movie is: A muse comes down (from the heavens), visits a guy in the '80s and inspires him to create great art through opening a roller disco. And she's Australian.

“Other than that, we just made it up.”

There are some things about the original “Xanadu” you just couldn't make up. For one, it proved to be the final (unlikely) film appearance of Gene Kelly, the star of “Singin' in the Rain” and other classic musicals. For another: All that stuff about the Australian muse and the roller disco? The movie did not mean it as a joke.

That's what separates the stage “Xanadu” from its inspiration: It's a kind of comic homage, not a remake, although Ashley says the show is nevertheless geekily earnest in its commitment to satire. To give the piece the proper mythological mojo, for example, the director went so far as to take La Jolla cast members to the Getty Center in Malibu so they could study Greek statuary.

“They have to sort of believe it and care about it and mean it,” Ashley says. “So much of the secret of 'Xanadu' is the cast has to take it incredibly seriously. As soon as they start sending it up or winking at it, it dissolves like tissue in your hands. You have to believe this ridiculous story absolutely.”

The idea to bring “Xanadu” to the stage started with Rob Ahrens, who had never produced a Broadway show but happened to see a bootleg stage takeoff on the movie in Los Angeles about seven years ago.

He managed to enlist Douglas Carter Beane, a friend and creative partner of Ashley's, to write the book for the musical. Early workshops didn't look promising – Beane had reconceived the story as what Ashley calls “a big goof on '80s politics,” with Ronald and Nancy Reagan as characters.

“We did a reading of it, and everybody was like, 'I don't think this is a good idea,' ” Ashley recalls with a laugh. “So, we went back to the drawing board and remade it as a love story, which seemed like a way better spine for it.”

The show was unveiled to an extremely skeptical theater world in May 2007, and wound up earning four Tony nominations, including best musical. (It left empty-handed, though it did tie with “Young Frankenstein” for best musical in the Outer Critic Circle Awards, and Beane won a Drama Desk award for his book.)

Though the La Jolla creative team is the same as on Broadway – including choreographer Dan Knechtges, set designer David Gallo and lighting designer Howell Binkley – the cast is entirely new. Elizabeth Stanley stars as the muse Kira (the Newton-John role, played by Kerry Butler on Broadway), opposite Max von Essen as the starry-eyed earthling Sonny. Larry Marshall (as Danny, the Gene Kelly role), Joanna Glushak and Sharon Wilkins round out the other top roles.

Stanley was at the Playhouse exactly one year ago, playing Allison in the John Waters-inspired musical “Cry-baby” – a show that moved to Broadway and eventually went up against “Xanadu” for the top Tony. (Both were beaten out by “In the Heights.”)

She admits some jitters over having to roller skate for this role, thanks to memories of a painful fall as a kid in Illinois. Beyond that, though, Stanley says “Xanadu” is full of sweet indulgences.

“I was telling one of my friends that this show is like one guilty pleasure after another,” she says. “Singing into a fan, and skating under a disco ball – there are so many things that are fun.”

At a Playhouse rehearsal one recent afternoon, Stanley was reciting the first lines of the Coleridge poem “Kubla Khan” (whose reference to the mythical Xanadu gives the show its name) in a ripe Australian accent, before gliding in on skates to meet the startled Sonny.

Why would a Greek muse speak with an Australian accent? Because Newton-John did in the movie. It's just the kind of loopy logic “Xanadu” revels in.

In keeping with the show's silly-but-serious approach, though, Stanley says she worked hard with Ashley to figure out what makes this renegade muse tick.

“I don't think she ever expected to break all these rules (of musedom),” Stanley says of Kira. “To fall in love, to tell someone she's a muse, and to create art – three things she's forbidden to do.

“As happens, when people – or gods – fall in love, you do things you never expected to do. You feel things you never knew you could feel. I guess that's why it's a story worth writing.”

When the original Kira, Newton-John, signed on for the film, it was not long after her blockbuster success in “Grease.” John Farrar, who wrote that movie's hits “You're the One That I Want” and “Hopelessly Devoted to You” for her, was happy to come along for “Xanadu,” though he admits having doubts from the start.

Though he calls it “a pretty bad movie,” Farrar says that “at the time, I was loving being involved. I had read the script and I just didn't see how it was going to all work. But I didn't know anything about making movies.”

The score originally was going to be written by Farrar and several other writers, all contributing songs. But then ELO and its leader, Jeff Lynne, were brought in. Ultimately, Farrar wrote five songs for the film, including the hit “Magic”; all of them are in the musical, plus his earlier hit for Newton-John, “Have You Never Been Mellow.”

ELO, one of the hottest bands of that time, contributed the title tune and such songs as “All Over the World.” For the stage, Ashley and Co. added a couple of earlier ELO hits, “Evil Woman” and “Strange Magic.”

For Ashley, the music brings back memories of a brief, strange time in his teens when he was living in Portugal with his family. All his cassette tapes had been stolen, save for two: “Frampton Comes Alive!” and “Xanadu.”

Giving those songs a second life, he says, brings him the same kind of pleasure he enjoyed a few years back in directing “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on Broadway.

“Things that were really important to you as a teenager, you get to revisit as an adult,” Ashley says. “And kind of remake and own.”

LAST DANCE

It'd be hard to come up with a less likely Xana-dude than Gene Kelly, the musical icon who had his last on-screen appearance in the 1980 movie. Composer John Farrar, who wrote the 1940s-esque “Whenever You're Away From Me” for Kelly to perform in “Xanadu,” has vivid memories of working with the ageless hoofer.

“I had to pick him up in my car every day and take him to rehearsal, and play the guitar, while he taught Olivia (Newton-John) to do the dancing. He didn't want to use a (recorded) track or anything, which normally people would do. So, I sat there with my little guitar and amp while he taught her to dance.”

Farrar recalls that Kelly's tap-dancing sequences also had to be rehearsed and recorded on the kitchen floor of a small studio Farrar had borrowed from a friend.

“I look back on it and there were some funny moments,” Farrar says. “But I feel bad that was his last film. Probably a career mistake for him, you know?”

– JAMES HEBERT

XANA WHO?

A miniature Xana-lanche of fun facts about the show and the movie:

The Broadway production, says director Christopher Ashley, attracted legions of self-described “Fanadus” who attended the show upward of 100 times.

Though the stage show was meant to seem jokily low-budget, something like 175 disco balls descend in a sequence at the end.

The original movie's choreographer, Kenny Ortega, is now better known as the director of all three films in the insanely successful “High School Musical” franchise.

Meanwhile, its director, Robert Greenwald, has recently produced and directed a series of lefty documentaries, including “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers” and “The Real McCain.” (Lending credence to the theory that “Xanadu” was really a subtle allegory of the age-old conflict between individual autonomy and the supremely powerful, disco-hating state.)

More proof the movie was way ahead of its time: When Kira (Olivia Newton-John) and her fellow muses come to life, they look almost exactly like the “holograms” CNN used in its recent election coverage.

In 1979, the name Kira barely made the list of Top 1,000 baby names. Last year, it was No. 268. (You could look it up.)

– JAMES HEBERT