Edward Juvier stars as Osgood and Tavis Kordell is Daphne in First National Touring Company's production of Some Like It Hot.Matthew Murphy/Supplied
The secret to baking a fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth meringue is consistent heat; luckily, some like it hot.
A sweet, airy, Art Deco meringue of a show with just enough heart and soul that it doesn’t float away entirely, the touring production of Some Like It Hot currently lighting up the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre is a genuine good time. While its brassy score is more serviceable than memorable, the whole package is such fast-dancing, freewheeling fun that any concerns simply vanish like a pair of fleeing witnesses.
Thanks to drag’s current utility as a political football, it sadly feels more potentially fraught to feature it now than when Billy Wilder’s award-winning film starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe premiered in 1959. In the iconic movie, Joe (played in the theatre production by Matt Loehr) and Jerry (Tavis Kordell), witness a mob hit that puts them on the run from Spats Colombo (Devon Goffman) and his goons. Their only way out is to pose as Josephine and Daphne, leaving the state as part of Sweet Sue’s (Dequina Moore) touring all-female band headed by the beautiful but rebellious Sugar Kane (Leandra Ellis-Gaston).
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Adapting a classic is an enormous task that balances attempting to please diehard fans without turning the enterprise into a nostalgia property. Under Casey Nicholaw’s direction and choreography, the book team of Matthew López (The Inheritance) and Amber Ruffin (with additional material from Christian Borle and Joe Farrell) does an admirable job shading in the film’s main characters and creating a subtle examination of identity befitting a modern sensibility, while keeping the main beats and putting the fun centre stage.
Shifting the time period slightly later, to 1933 from 1929, lands the characters in the depths of the Depression and near the end of Prohibition, adding poignancy to their desperation for work and the need for both physical and mental escape. Sweet Sue’s opening number, which asks, “What Are You Thirsty For?” efficiently establishes the theme of longing for something tantalizingly beyond your reach.
The filled-in backstory sweetens the characters, explaining Joe’s scheming as a product of abandonment issues and his tight relationship with Jerry as the person who’s never abandoned him. In Loehr’s hands, Joe’s a lovable, loquacious rogue, increasingly smarting at comments about his age while he’s wearing a wig. Kordell’s quiet and subtle delight at becoming “Daphne” is infectious, particularly when paired with some fantastic high kicks. They’re matched by Ellis-Gaston’s Sugar, a wide-eyed optimist who’s also filled with grim determination; together, they form a trio reminiscent of another classic film, Singin’ in the Rain.
Moore’s fabulous Sweet Sue also has more agency here, a speakeasy-running mama bear with a booming voice and a quirky assistant with a penchant for accidental break-and-enter (a break-and-entertaining Devon Hadsell).
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López and Ruffin diversify the cast to enrich the story: The job market is particularly difficult for Joe and Jerry because Joe’s brother from another mother can’t play at segregated clubs. Sugar, meanwhile, dreams of seeing stars on the silver screen who look like her while being relegated to the cinema balcony, angling for a Hollywood career rather than just a rich husband (the band tours to California instead of the South, for obvious reasons).
The musical also wisely ditches the love triangle and sex farce atmosphere, letting lovestruck Joe focus on Sugar and the secret he can’t tell her as Josephine while Jerry grapples with his newfound sense of peace as Daphne, playing music with a cadre of new friends. López and Ruffin thoughtfully parallel these stories of a person who finds multiple identities destructive because all save one are lies, and another who accepts a duality of identity because both are the truth.
Even the man who falls for Daphne, a hotter, salt-and-pepper version of sugar daddy millionaire Osgood Fielding III, played here by the charming Edward Juvier, both dances up a storm and tells a moving story about his own dual identity, with roots beyond the California border.
If you’re worried that the extra layers cut down on the hijinks, rest assured that there are still hijinks in spades, and delightful ones at that. Joe and Jerry are also accomplished tap dancers, with Sugar and the entire cast joining in on the hoofing in countless energetic numbers.
Nicholaw provides playful prop comedy, characters tossing ukuleles into the air and cavorting on baggage carts, before impeccably timing an extended climactic chase scene through a hotel for maximum farce. The show knows we don’t believe anyone’s in real danger and doesn’t try to convince us otherwise.
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Greg Barnes’ glittering costumes, many inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, showcase the 1930s bias cut trend and further decorate the shiny, clean lines of Scott Pask’s Art Deco set.
If there’s any disappointment in Some Like It Hot, it’s the score by Marc Shaiman and lyricist Scott Wittman, which sounds lush and full in Charlie Rosen and Bryan Carter’s orchestrations, but doesn’t deliver much more than eager, generic pastiche. It’s not helped by microphone issues that cause a volume imbalance between the leads and result in some of the faster chorus patter getting lost in the tap-dancing shuffle.
Maybe the new songs won’t be designated for preservation like Wilder’s film. But as a sweet, meltaway Broadway treat? You’ll like it hot.
And hey, two people wore drag, had some fun and no one died.
Well … almost no one. But nobody’s perfect.