By SHARON EBERSON
When I saw Some Like It Hot on Broadway in 2023, I called it an “old-timey crowd-pleaser,” an opportunity to revel in its sparkly escapism, kinetic energy, and tap dancing for days.
Writing about the movie on which it is based, the great film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “[Billy] Wilder’s 1959 comedy is one of the enduring treasures of the movies, a film of inspiration and meticulous craft, a movie that’s about nothing but sex, and yet pretends it’s about crime and greed.” (You really should read his review. It’s a gem from 2000.)
Times have changed, as Cole Porter wrote in Anything Goes. The 13-time Tony Award-nominated musical, winner of four, would surely not be welcomed at the Kennedy Center these days.
It had never occurred to me that a dance-heavy farce, based on beloved film, could be so divisive.
One person’s delight, it appears, can be another’s, “Not today.”
Having just seen it again, when the first national tour opened at the Benedum Center on Tuesday, April 15, 2025, I still fall on the side of delight.
in the first national tour of Some Like It Hot, now at the Benedum Center.
(Images: Matthew Murphy)
The story of two male musicians, pursued by gangsters after witnessing a murder, donning drag to hide out in an all-girls band, has been updated in a minimalist but profound way by songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Tony winners for Hairspray) and book writers Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin.
Those who love the movie may find the character changes sacrilegious. I find them fitting, displaying sense and sensitivity, pulling back from the cinematic, and adding to the theatricality.
Of the songs, including the welcome “Let’s Be Bad,” borrowed from Shaiman-Wittman’s own Smash, a standout comes in the second act, when the multi-talented Tavis Kordell, as Daphne, shares a personal revelation. The title is “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With A Feather,” and I’ll let you take it from there.
Some Like It Hot must have been director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw’s dream job. Sure, he’s infused a bunch of musicals with tap dance numbers – The Book of Mormon and Spamalot come to mind, and there are those tap dancing eggs in Something Rotten!, and so on. But for Some Like It Hot, he’s pulled out all the stops, start to finish, with numbers that are part of shows within the show, and others that just flow in and out of the action, including to accentuate chase scenes. No wonder he finally earned a Tony Award for best choreography, on his sixth nomination. (He was nominated as best director, too.)
The tour’s stars and ensemble all have to be on their toes, literally, or leaping, or sliding across the floor, or remembering which door to open in a scene that’s a wonder to perform live, seven shows a week.
It’s true that to enjoy Some Like It Hot, you have to suspend your disbelief and accept that men will be believed as women — think the cross-dressing Tom Hanks, in TV’s Bosom Buddies.
The muscular, towering Kordell is the real stretch as Daphne; while Matt Loehr’s Josephine is the subject of taunts about her age from the leader of the band, Sweet Sue (Tarra Conner Jones, a full-on Nell Carter sound-alike and force of nature). However, she prefers not to question the sex of the two musicians who have arrived at the perfect time, at the start of a tour from Chicago to San Diego.
Before there were Daphne and Josephine, there were Jerry (Kordell) and Joe (Loeher), a bass player and saxophone player, scraping for a buck, and brothers by circumstance and choice.
Casting Black and White actors in the roles brings racism into the mix of sexism and Prohibition Era crimes from the original story. When not playing in a band, Jerry and Joe – Kordell and Loehr also dance up a storm – call their act the Tip Tap Twins.
When it is suggested that Sue take her band to the South, circa 1929, she says, “Look at me,” meaning the color of her skin, and it’s California, here they come.
Sue’s got other problems. The band’s singer, Sugar Cane – Leandra Ellis Gaston in the Marilyn Monroe role – is prone to drink on the sly, and has big Hollywood dreams, although “I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.”
Gaston’s vocals shine, and she radiates sex appeal that catches the previously philandering Joe, undercover as Josephine, by surprise. Loehr, who understudied the role of Leo Bloom in The Producers on Broadway, brings that nervous energy to a character who moves among three characters: a scheming song-and-dance man; a female musician, raised by nuns; and a German screenwriter, wooing Sugar.
The character who undergoes one of the biggest transformations from screen to stage is that of the ultra-wealthy but seemingly naive Osgood Fielding III (Edward Juvier), who falls for Daphne at first sight. His past is revealed in one of the most engaging first-act numbers, “Poor Little Millionaire,” giving him unexpected depth and insight.
That’s not to say that Juvier shies from Osgood’s goofiness – characters in Some Like It Hot are often expressed through movement, and Osgood flexes rubbery legs with comic timing as he tries to win over a reluctant Daphne.
In some ways, the glitzy stage version makes more sense than the original, but mostly, it’s that big Broadway musical that we see little of these days, including myriad Tony-winning costume changes and an ensemble that, among other bold moves, tosses and catches ukuleles like a juggling act. Among that group on opening night was Point Park University alum Austin Dunn, while Pittsburgh native Ian Campayno played Sonny, a henchman to lead mobster Spats (Devon Goffman).
Some Like It Hot, the musical, pays tribute to that “enduring treasure” of a film, with antics and jokes that are a throwback to not-so-easygoing times, when the ’20s roared, and it was considered de rigueur to objectify beautiful women. It also elevates another truth, about the revelations that come with walking a mile in women’s heels, and accepting who you are, and who your friends are.
Mostly, Some Like It Hot fits the bill for a rollicking, old-fashioned, good-time night at the theater.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
he national tour of Some Like It Hot is presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, as part of the 2024-2025 PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh Series, April 15 – 20, 2025, at the Benedum Center, Downtown. Tickets: https://trustarts.org/production/94992/some-like-it-hot.
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