Whittier Community Theatre proves it’s still going strong in its 101st season with 9 to 5: The Musical, the 2009 Broadway musical adaptation of the 1980 Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin-Dolly Parton movie smash.

Abigail Kinnahan stars as Judy Bernly, who having recently divorced her philandering dick of a husband Dick (Edward Bangasser as Dick), now finds herself joining the corporate workforce for the first time in her life.

Veronique Merrill Waner plays veteran secretary Violet Newstead, currently raising teenage son Josh (Levi Montoya) as a single mother while witnessing one man after another get promoted to executive positions that ought by rights to be hers.

Madeleine Chocholaty completes the overworked-and-underpaid-secretarial trio as Dolly-stand-in Doralee Rhodes, rumored to be canoodling with Consolidated Industries president Franklin Hart Jr. (Bear C.A. Sanchez) while in fact remaining faithfully married to Dwayne (Garrett Ching).

And Judy, Violet, and Doralee aren’t the only employees beleaguered by Hart’s dictatorial reign over the secretarial pool.

Maria (Tatiana Martinez) is about to be fired simply for asking a co-worker her salary, Margaret (Jennifer Harmon) arrives tipsy at 9:00 and goes home drunk as a skunk at 5:00, and Kathy (Kim Forest) gets her kicks spreading office gossip.

Decidedly not an ally of her fellow females at Consolidated is Hart’s bulldog of an administrative assistant Roz (Dahna Lane), who nurses an impossible crush on her boss, no matter that he’s married to Missy (Maya Puterbaugh) and apparently sleeping with Doralee.

And so things go until the fateful day that Judy accidentally puts rat poison in Hart’s coffee in place of sugar, and in so doing finds herself faced with the possibility of jail time unless…

Book writer Patricia Resnick wisely sticks closely to the movie original’s plot, and with Parton herself serving as songwriter, the result is a bright and bouncy journey back in time to a not-so-long-ago era when a male boss (they were all male back then) could call his secretary a “girl” (there being no such thing as a female “office manager” in those bygone days) and get away with it.

With its cast of characters made up almost entirely of everyday office workers, 9 to 5: The Musical lends itself particularly well to a community theater like WCT, many if not most of whose volunteer actors hold down their own 9-to-5 jobs during the day, leaving their evenings free to perform simply for the love of it.

Still, without a trio of leading ladies capable of lighting up a stage (as Allison Janney, Stephanie J. Block, and Megan Hilty did on Broadway fifteen years ago), 9 to 5: The Musical will fizzle rather than sizzle, and in this respect director Susan Marx has lucked out big-time, and the WCT audience as well.

Under Marx’s assured direction, Kinnahan’s Judy may start out a mousy caterpillar, but by the time she belts out the eleventh-hour showstopper that is “Get Out And Stay” out, she’s emerged a butterfly more than ready to take flight.

Warner makes an equally strong impression as the sharp-tongued Violet, who’s not only the glue that holds Consolidated Industries together but a woman capable of leading a bunch of kick-line chorus boys in her own song-and-dance showstopper.

Chocholaty steals every scene she’s in as the next best thing to having Dolly Parton herself (circa 1980) playing Doralee, and just wait until the CSULB senior belts out “Backwoods Barbie” and “Cowgirl’s Revenge” to do Miss Parton proud.

Sanchez is sleaze personified as the most despicable and smarmy of bosses, Lane makes for a wonderfully weird and wacky Roz with a powerhouse belt to boot, Klinner’s Joe is more than enough of a tall, bearded charmer to have Violet smitten, and Jerry Marble’s last-minute arrival as Consolidated CEO Mr. Tinsworthy is worth waiting for.

Bryan Fan, Francis Gacad, Keely Jimenez, Stacey Li, Dolf Ramos, Samantha Randall, and Alana Ruhe join the previously mentioned ensemble members as assorted office staffers and more, and thanks to choreographer Tara Pitt, who knows precisely how to bring out the best in a non-professional cast, production numbers like “Around Here,” “Change It,” and the title song (and a trio of fantasy sequences that allow Judy to imagine herself a nightclub chanteuse, Doralee as a whip-cracking cowgirl, and Violet as a Disney-esque princess) give the entire cast the chance to shine.

Music director Kevin Wiley deserves his own major snaps, not just for conducting the production’s topnotch eight-piece orchestra but in eliciting pitch-perfect ensemble vocals to Stephen Oremus’s super-tough, super-gorgeous harmonies.

Marx keeps her scenic design simple (set pieces rolled swiftly on and off the stage), a savvy decision considering how many scene changes there are, though unfortunately Richard Linsey’s otherwise fine lighting design overpowers scene-setting upstage projections so much that they fade into barely visible images.

Nancy Tyler, Julie Breihan, and Yvette Price have assembled a great big bunch of late-‘70s, early ‘80s costumes and the same can be said for Margie Wann, Emily Velasco, and Richard De Vicariis’s period props, and sound tech Suzanne Frederickson’s mix of amped voices and instrumentals is almost entirely spot-on.

9 to 5: The Musical is produced by De Vicariis. Wann is assistant producer and stage manager. Velasco is assistant stage manager. Frederickson is technical director.

Not many American theaters can lay claim to having produced over 100 seasons, making Whittier Community Theatre’s 101st an event worth celebrating. That 9 to 5: The Musical is a bona fide crowd-pleaser is icing on the cake.

Whittier Community Theatre, The Center Theatre, 7630 S. Washington Ave., Whittier.
www.WhittierCommunityTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
September 6, 2024
Photos: Ernie Peralta

Tags: Dolly Parton, Los Angeles Theater Review, Patricia Resnick, Whittier Community Theatre