| Saw "Some Like It Hot" the other night - thinking about what works and what doesn't (LONG) | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 02:12 pm EST 12/10/22 | |
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| On the whole, I was smiling throughout the first act. Second act has problems deciding where it wants to go. The lengthy chase scene is staged quite intricately, to not particularly noteworthy music, but otherwise is the highlight of the second act. The show's much too loud; at certain points, in some numbers where a few different characters had different lines, you couldn't tell who was singing, as they all appeared to be emanating from the same speakers without any differentiation. The Sweet Sue, Natasha Yvette Williams, was very good, though at the outset in her first number she was growling rather than singing, but she got much better in her expanded role. The Sugar, Adrianna Hicks, who probably had the best singing voice in the show, was quite lovely in her acting, but... her solo numbers were mostly power ballads and the amplification and way they were sung were just at full blast, with no difference in the delivery and not much room to build. She had the “fuzzy end of the lollipop” line (twice) from the film, but the role as now written didn’t go for the vulnerability of the film’s heroine, making her here seem a bit more self-sufficient, even if she still hides a whiskey flask and complains about men. The show’s heroine is even more about… J. Harrison Ghee, as Daphne/Jerry, is very talented and is given quite a few opportunities to shine, and he does. The show's book though really doesn't know what to do with him at its resolution, considering it's set in 1933 and (POSSIBLE SPOILER) if Daphne/Jerry is happier being a girl, well, full sex change operations didn’t exist until 1952, and the options back then would most likely be as like in most of the show, living as a woman who is a man pretending, though really liking, to be a woman. (END POSSIBLE SPOILER) Some points are clearly being made for a 2022 audience, but I don’t think, other than what seems like an admirable plea for inclusivity, that they landed or made their case that well other than sticking out as too contemporary. The Osgood, Kevin Del Aguila, moves and acts wonderfully, with a serviceable singing voice. He's pretty delightful on the whole, though his "Mariposa" number doesn't really give him much to work with, but they have made his role partly Latino to try to apparently fit in another demographic double-life box into the story-line. As for Christian Borle, he's a talented guy, but boy have they un-Tony Curtis-ed the role! Other than a dream film sequence where he's supposed to be elegant and chic dancing with Sugar (he's not really – much prettier dancing chorus boys abound in the show), they have Borle in ugly glasses and the most hideous blue and white dress during one sequence that only make it easy for other characters to make jokes at his/her expense about his/her looks and age. Granted, he already as a man looks kind of like a youngish Eric Idle from Monty Python, so he really would have been more a natural for the Jack Lemmon role if done more like the film. His big number in the 2nd act trying to work through his feelings has him trying mightily, but it really falls flat because the writers haven't given him a good number to sell, and I hope the writers or director listened to the quite wan audience response to it to try to fix, change or drop the sequence. The sets and lighting are quite big and at times beautiful, which is one thing this has in common with "Hairspray", composer Marc Shaiman's big hit. The title song, sounding somewhat similar to Huckleberry Hound's theme song, is catchy for that reason--it sounds familiar. The dancing in the show was another big highlight, though the score was mostly either lively in its uptempos or too driving in its ballads, but not particularly memorable otherwise. The audience seemed to enjoy the show, which had a few sustained ovations, and I liked the first act; but the 2nd act with its trying to espouse woke themes in the unwoke 1930s to a 2020's audience doesn't work as well as the first. So it's just louder and louder amplification used to plug in the holes, and with some marvelous dancing. I’d say that it does provide a good time if you’re not as critical as I’ve been, and I did like the performers, the sets and the dancing. |
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