Some like it hot — and modern too

How do you solve a problem like an outdated play? Broadway takes several cracks at it

What to do with old shows?

While newly created works keep the performing arts alive, productions of existing material are the bread and butter of many theatrical institutions. But in our age of heightened awareness around representations of gender, race and ability, some plays show their age in ways that risk offending contemporary sensibilities.

So do we just present them as is and damn the torpedoes? Or do we try to bring them up to date?

These questions — never far from my consciousness as someone who regularly reviews productions at the Stratford and Shaw festivals, and elsewhere — were front and centre on a recent trip to New York, where I saw Broadway productions that came at the to-update-or-notto-update question in a variety of ways and with wildly varying success.

For a master class in how to get updating just right, look no further than “Some Like It Hot,” a new musical version by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman of the classic Billy Wilder movie starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. The premise of the film — after witnessing a mob hit in Prohibition-era Chicago, two male musicians pretend to be women and join an all-female band — initially sounds dated given that it uses cross-dressing as comic fodder (recent musical versions of “Tootsie” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” successful comedy films about men in dresses, did not take off with Broadway audiences).

The creators of the “Some Like It Hot” musical have deeply considered how to make the material work for today while also prioritizing entertainment value. Crucially, they’ve leaned into something hinted at in the film: that Jerry, one of the musicians (J. Harrison Ghee), discovers their true self by dressing up as Daphne and will continue to live as a woman.

Jerry/Daphne and several other central characters are Black, and book writers Matthew López and Amber Ruffin acknowledge the effect this has on their lives: Christian Borle’s Joe/Josephine, who is white, moves through spaces more easily than Jerry/Daphne, and the girl band tours to California rather than (as in the movie) Florida because it would be implausible to have an act led by a Black woman — the magnificent NaTasha Yvette Williams as Sweet Sue — playing in the Jim Crow South. Making the starlet Sugar Kane Black and leaning into Adrianna Hicks’ fabulous vocal abilities help Hicks own the role on her own terms rather than emulating Monroe’s famously sexed-up Sugar.

Ghee gives a triumphant performance as Daphne that seems likely to challenge the Tony Awards when nominations are announced in early May since Tony performance categories are still split into male and female, and Ghee is non-binary.

I’m not the only critic who’s raving about “Some Like It Hot,” but it’s not a runaway hit — the week I visited, it played to 75 per cent capacity. It’s a revival of “Funny Girl” that’s currently dominating Broadway buzz, but I came away from it disappointed. The star miscasting of Lea Michele highlights the datedness of the material and Michael Mayer’s production looks flimsy compared to the skilful, gleeful glitz of “Some Like It Hot.”

“Funny Girl” is based on the reallife story of Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, and was famously a stage and screen vehicle for Barbra Streisand. Producers of this revival struggled for years to find a Fanny for today and thought they had one in Beanie Feldstein, but the show got tepid reviews when it opened last spring. In particular, critics noted that Feldstein’s voice wasn’t strong enough to deliver Jule Styne’s and Bob Merrill’s showstopping numbers and, by the end of July, she had left the show.

In a meta-televisual-theatrical twist, her replacement was Michele, who became famous on TV’s “Glee” as a character obsessed with “Funny Girl.”

Michele can absolutely sing the role — her vocal performance is tremendous — but she tries too hard to deliver Fanny’s scrappiness and insecurity, and I struggled to fully believe her characterization.

As written, the character uses comedic ability and charisma to compensate for the fact she isn’t beautiful. Michele’s conventional attractiveness presents a hurdle that she doesn’t fully overcome. And while playwright Harvey Fierstein has done some surface updating to the book originally written by Isobel Lennart, this remains a dated melodrama about a talented career woman whose sense of self-worth is tragically tied up in her devotion to a suave, undeserving man (Canadian Ramin Karimloo does his estimable best with the thankless role of gambler Nick Arnstein).

A new-old show that will give “Some Like It Hot” a run for its money in the new musical categories at this year’s Tonys is “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical version of David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2000 play of the same name with music by Jeanine Tesori, and book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire.

It’s the touching story of a 16-yearold girl with a rare disorder that makes her age four and a half times faster than is genetically usual; the character is luminously played by Broadway star Victoria Clark, who is in her early 60s. She has a basketcase family of childish adults — hypochondriac mother (Alli Mauzey), alcoholic father (Jim Hogan at the performance reviewed) and hilariously crime-scheme-prone aunt (the show-stopping Bonnie Milligan) — and a budding friendship with smart kid Seth (2021 high school graduate Justin Cooley in a lovely Broadway debut).

This small-scale piece successfully walks the line between quirky and cloying thanks to Tesori’s and Lindsay-Abaire’s songs and Jessica Stone’s sensitive direction. Those who like their Broadway shows spectacular will likely be unsatisfied by “Kimberly Akimbo,” but if you gravitate toward original, observant writing and are curious how a story like this could possibly have an uplifting ending, it’s more than worth a look.

“Kimberly Akimbo” is set in “1999. Before kids had cellphones.” Another hit show that’s navigating the before-and-after-times of instant communication is “Take Me Out,” a Broadway revival of Richard Greenberg’s play about a star mixed-race baseball player who comes out as gay.

The play’s still set in 2002 and this helps make sense of the relatively slow way that information travels in the plot and how the lives of famous ball players are not framed by social media. It’s therefore ironic that the production involved what was for me a first: audience members must lock their phones in Yondr pouches to stop photos and videos of the show’s several nude shower scenes from circulating on the internet.

Greenberg’s writing is dazzling and Scott Ellis’s production is a wonderful vehicle for star turns from two TV stars named Jesse. Jesse Williams of “Grey’s Anatomy” gives a mesmerizingly laidback performance as Darren Lemming, the player who comes out; and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, best known for “Modern Family,” won the 2022 Best Featured Actor Tony as the uptight gay money manager who falls in love with baseball after Darren hires him. Bill Heck is equally good as the play’s narrator Kippy, even if that character is implicated in some of the play’s implausible elements.

A very different play than “Take Me Out,” but one that also gave me hope for the future of intelligent writing on Broadway, is Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” I’m cheating my “old plays” theme somewhat by including this new piece of writing, but it’s a play that comes from a senior writer (Stoppard is 85), and delivers such gravitas and contemplative wisdom that it feels like an already proven classic.

A semibiographical account of Stoppard’s family history, the play is not as formally inventive as earlier Stoppard plays such as the metaShakespearean “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” or the time-jumping “Arcadia.” It rather makes its stately way through 56 years in the lives of a Viennese Jewish family, from turn-of-the-century bourgeois affluence through the ravages of two world wars to a gutwrenching final scene set in 1955, in which the three surviving family members rake over questions of historical memory, personal responsibility and legacy in the wake of the Holocaust (one of those characters, Leo, is a stand-in for Stoppard himself ).

Patrick Marber’s elegant production is of an almost inconceivable scale for a nonmusical Broadway play, involving 26 adult and 12 child actors, including understudies. But it rewards close attention as relationships develop and family ties are affirmed and strained. Over two hours without an intermission, the play came to feel like a shared ritual of witness and contemplation.

Mirvish Productions planned to present the North American premiere of “Leopoldstadt” but cancelled the run during the late 2021 COVID-19 Omicron outbreak. David Mirvish said at the time that he was determined to bring it in Toronto when it was safe to do so (here’s hoping). In the meantime, tickets are on sale for the run at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre through July.