SOME LIKE IT HOT


Not everybody things hot, but it’s hard to imagine any Broadway musical lover not being smitten by the quadruple-Tony-winning stage adaptation of the Billy Wilder movie classic Some Like It Hot now playing at the Hollywood Pantages, a song-and-dance-and-laugh-packed entertainment bonanza with an updated sensibility where race and gender are concerned.

Movie buffs will recall the tale screenwriters Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond had to tell back in 1959, that of a pair of Chicago musicians named Jerry and Joe who, having eyewitnessed a 1929 gangland shooting, manage to escape from the mob by donning female drag and joining the all-girl jazz band Sweet Sue’s Society Syncopaters.

It doesn’t take long for romance to bloom between an out-of-drag Joe and Syncopater sexpot songtress Sugar Kane, and between a still-in-drag “Daphne” and eccentric millionaire Osgood Fielding, whose lavish gifts might just be enough to turn any girl’s head including Daphne’s.

Rather than follow in the footsteps of book writer Peter Stone, whose 1972 Broadway take on the Wilder film (retitled Sugar and featuring songs by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill) was more or less a carbon copy of the movie original, 2022 adapters Matthew López and Amber Ruffin have stuck with the plot basics while revising aspects of 1959 original that have dated the film where casting and attitudes are concerned.

Three of its five leading characters (Jerry/Daphne, Sugar, and Sweet Sue) are now African Americans, Osgood’s mother was Mexican, and the societal attitudes of the early 1930s are reflected in the challenges the foursome face as people of color in a time when segregation, whether legally mandated and de facto, was pretty much the law of the land. (The hiring agent for a speakeasy run by gangster Spats Colombo’s initially refuses to accept Joe and Jerry as a package deal. Osgood has had to keep his mother’s Mexican origin hidden.)

And if Wilder’s movie (and its 1972 musical adaptation) treated Osgood’s falling for Daphne as a joke, 2022-version Jerry discovers to their surprise that in becoming Daphne, they are discovering an aspect of their gender identity that they hardly knew was there. (“Today I’m wearing a dress. But tomorrow might be a suit and tie. I like having options.”)

Finally, by fast-forwarding the action to the very tail end of Prohibition, composer Marc Shaiman gets to recreate the jazzy sounds of the early Big Band Era to rousing effect (Charlie Rosen and Bryan Carter won a Tony for their orchestrations), Casey Nicholaw (who won a Best Choreography Tony for SLIH in addition to his Best Direction nomination) gets to give the show’s high-powered triple-threat ensemble one big tap-dancing, high-kicking extravaganza after another to execute to Broadway perfection, and Best Costume Design Tony winner Gregg Barnes gets to outfit the cast in an abundance of slinky, sensuous 1930s-stylish gowns and natty men’s suits.

All of this adds up to a musical that feels like both a mid-20th-century Broadway classic and something very 2020s.

It’s also a show that gives its five principal players roles that are all five dazzlers, and dazzle in them they do.

Matt Loehr proves himself a master of physical/screwball comedy in a trio of identities, not just as the manic Joe and the prudish Josephine but also as the wacky Austrian screenwriter Kip whom Joe pretends to be when wooing Sugar in men’s attire.

Stunner Leandra Ellis-Gaston is a sultry sensation as Sugar with a belt to reach the rafters, goodness gracious but Tarra Conner Jones is a great big ball of fire as the supremely sassy Sue, and Edward Juvier’s Osgood steals scenes even from the cast’s other scene steals as the gayest (as the adjective was used in the 1930s) and goofiest of suitors.

CSUF musical theater grad-turned-Broadway standout Devon Hadsell (Minnie), Jamie LaVerdiere (Agent Mulligan), and Devon Goffman (Spats Colombo) do terrific work in major featured roles.

And ensembles don’t get any more triple-threat-tastic than Some Like It Hot’s (Ashley Marie Arnold, Kelly Berman, Darien Crago, Drew Franklin, Devin Holloway, Emily Kelly, Brianna Kim, Stephen Michael Langton, Jay Owens, Ranease Ryann, Nissi Shalome, 2016 Breakthrough Star Of The Year Scenie winner Michael Skrzek, and Tommy Sutter) as Society Syncopators, gangsters, porters, bellhops, and more.

Still, if there’s any recent musical that’s a bona fide superstar vehicle for one of its stars, it’s Some Like It Hot, and following in J. Harrison Ghee Tony-winning footsteps, Tavis Kordell is outrageously funny, touchingly real, and triumphantly inspirational as the emerging butterfly that is Daphne.

Scenic designer Scott Pask gives Some Like It Hot a bunch of gorgeously art deco sets with Broadway lighting design legend Natasha Katz making everything on the Pantages stage look that much more spectacular.

 Last but not least, music director Mark Binns conducts a Broadway-caliber pit orchestra made up of touring and L.A.-based musicians.

Recreating Nicholaw’s magic on tour are associate director Steve Debout and associate choreographer John MacInnes . Ayla Allen, Austin Dunn, dance captain Tim Fuchs, Rachael Britton Hart, and Bryan Thomas Hunt are swings. Ian Campayno and Adena Ershow are vacation swings. DeAnne L. Boise is company manager and Donovan Dolan is production stage manager.

All of the above adds up to as old-fashioned-entertaining a new musical as Broadway has seen in years, as nostalgic in its Golden Era glitz and pizzazz as it is contemporary in its attitudes. Broadway shows simply don’t get any hotter than Some Like it Hot.

Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles. Through August 17. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 Fridays at 8:00. Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00. Sundays at 1:00 and 6:30.
www.broadwayla.org

–Steven Stanley
July 30, 2025
Photos: Matthew Murphy

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

 

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