When I think about the film “Some Like It Hot” — the deservedly classic 1959 cross-dressing comedy co-written and directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe — the ending always springs first to mind. I’m not alone; it’s iconic.
Joe E. Brown — sporting a perpetual mile-long, closed-mouthed grin — plays Osgood Fielding III, a millionaire who has fallen in love with a woman named Daphne who is actually a man named Jerry, Jack Lemmon in drag. In the last moment of the movie, Daphne/Jerry, having failed to convince Osgood of her/his marriage-defying flaws, pulls off his wig for his supposed fiancé.
“I’m a man,” he pronounces, with exasperated finality.
And without missing a beat, Brown’s Osgood replies: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
This musical version of “Some Like It Hot” also isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn terrific, a snazzily old-fashioned and fun show with cleverly fashioned story updates, particularly to the screwball romance between Daphne and Osgood. Book writers Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin infuse the cross-dressing zaniness with a convincing, and even moving, tale of self-discovery and self-acceptance.
Set during Prohibition, the story starts off in Chicago, with all the Jazz Age art deco design you can imagine on Scott Pask’s set, and colorful period costumes that won Gregg Barnes a Tony Award. Jerry (Tavis Kordell) and his lifelong pal Joe (Matt Loehr) are a couple of itinerant musicians and also a song-and-dance team. The two witness a gangster murder and escape their immediate demise by dressing as women and joining an all-girl band on their way to California, managed by Sweet Sue (a commanding Tarra Connor Jones) and headlined by Sugar Kane (Leandra Ellis-Gaston as a far more grounded version of the Marilyn Monroe character).
Joe, dressed as Josephine and constantly furious that the wig and glasses age him considerably, falls for Sugar in a familiar version of the cross-dressing plotline. Sugar trains him to notice her for her, and when she falls for the out-of-disguise Joe (taking on a silly German accent to sound different), Joe has to figure out how, or whether, he can tell the truth without blowing the relationship. It’s fine. It’s not interesting, or especially funny, but it’s fine. It’s the core narrative arc of the movie, by the way, and of the first musical adaptation of this story from 1972 called “Sugar” because the producer David Merrick originally couldn’t get the license to the film title.
The Daphne-Osgood romance, on the other hand, has always been the more screwball part — a wacky rich guy magically becoming wildly enamored with a guy in drag; the movie’s ending line doesn’t come across as acceptance as just an ideal punchline, delivered by Joe E. Brown with a comic otherworldliness.
But in this take, Jerry discovers that he loves being Daphne, for real for real, finding him/herself happy for the first time. And Osgood (an immediately likable Edward Juvier) isn’t just an eccentric oddball but oozes acceptance for all that Daphne is or may be. She falls in love with exactly that.
The pleasing, Broadway-version-of-jazzy score — from the “Hairspray” team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Whittman — reaches its peak with Daphne’s number “You Coulda Knocked Me Over with a Feather,” which the triple-threat talent Kordell delivers with both passion and joy.
The other significant highlights of the show involve director Casey Nicholaw’s choreography. The tap numbers are great, but even more impressive are the ways Nicholaw weaves together the action and the movement, culminating in a climactic chase scene that finds a farcical vocabulary for the dancing.
Despite its significant charms, this show never gained hit-like traction on Broadway, even with much-praised star turns by J. Harrison Ghee (who won the Tony for playing Jerry/Daphne) and Christian Borle.
I think it’s because the show achieves a surprising, contemporary sincerity, but the comedy never quite reaches the giddily joyful heights of, say, Nicholaw’s “The Drowsy Chaperone.” There could a greater sense of the anarchic, the improper, the carnivalesque upside-downness that can come with screwball comedy, and the gangster elements require a far greater sense of playfulness that comes with riffing on a stylized genre. And the music satisfies without ever exhilarating.
But we should heed Osgood Fielding III here and leave with Joe E. Brown’s broad smile. No show is perfect.
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