Some Like it Hot (Broadway)
Feb. 3rd, 2023 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThis is based on the 1959 film that starred Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe and follows basically the same plot: During prohibition, a pair of male musicians witness a mob hit, and escape by disguising themselves as women and joining an all-girl band. One of them falls in love with a girl in the band, the other attracts the attention of nutty millionaire. Hilarity ensues.
They did a really good job of updating the show to more modern sensibilities—and the original movie is already amazing for its time. Jerry/Daphne’s enjoyment of being a woman is re-centered as a full-blown trans/genderqueer awakening. (And the character is played by J. Harrison Ghee, a non-binary actor.) The stage version makes a bunch of the characters black, but it isn’t race-blind casting, it’s a deliberate choice that the script accounts for. The character of Sugar Kane, while taking the same place in the story, is played very differently than Monroe’s style which means you aren’t making direct comparisons. (The fact that the actress, Adrianna Hicks, has a blow-you-away amazing voice doesn’t hurt either.)
The changes to Daphne’s character mean that they skip the amazing final line of the movie (“Nobody’s perfect,”) which was disappointing but understandable. The climatic chase through the hotel is fantastic; they go full farce and do a Scooby Doo doors chase with costume changes and goofy side bits. None of the songs leapt out as brilliant breakaway pop hits, but I’ll probably pull the cast album when it comes out because the cast is solid and pretty much all of the tracks are fun.
And Jethrien loved the costumes, which were not exactly period-appropriate but were better for it.
Overall: Great show, great cast, glad I saw it.
They did a really good job of updating the show to more modern sensibilities—and the original movie is already amazing for its time. Jerry/Daphne’s enjoyment of being a woman is re-centered as a full-blown trans/genderqueer awakening. (And the character is played by J. Harrison Ghee, a non-binary actor.) The stage version makes a bunch of the characters black, but it isn’t race-blind casting, it’s a deliberate choice that the script accounts for. The character of Sugar Kane, while taking the same place in the story, is played very differently than Monroe’s style which means you aren’t making direct comparisons. (The fact that the actress, Adrianna Hicks, has a blow-you-away amazing voice doesn’t hurt either.)
The changes to Daphne’s character mean that they skip the amazing final line of the movie (“Nobody’s perfect,”) which was disappointing but understandable. The climatic chase through the hotel is fantastic; they go full farce and do a Scooby Doo doors chase with costume changes and goofy side bits. None of the songs leapt out as brilliant breakaway pop hits, but I’ll probably pull the cast album when it comes out because the cast is solid and pretty much all of the tracks are fun.
And Jethrien loved the costumes, which were not exactly period-appropriate but were better for it.
Overall: Great show, great cast, glad I saw it.
