A REIMAGINING OF A HOLLYWOOD CLASSIC

Frothy fun with an affirmingly progressive perspective

The art deco sets (Scott Pask, scenic design), broad-shouldered plaids (Gregg Barnes, costumes), and jitterbugging choreography (Casey Nicholaw, who also directed) are a pleasing eyeful in Broadway in Boston’s energetic rendition of the Tony-award winning Some Like It Hot. But there’s more than meets the eye in this updated perspective (Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin, book) on a beloved Hollywood classic that trades on the gender anxiety of the 1950s for its mad-cap humor. And I don’t just mean the jazzy score (Marc Shaiman, music) and witty lyrics (Scott Wittman and Shaiman).

Company of Some Like It Hot (photo by Mathew Murphy)

In Lopez and Ruffin’s version, the story of two male musicians who dress like women after witnessing a gangland murder in Prohibition-era Chicago so they can disappear into an all-female jazz band headed for California becomes a story of finding gender authenticity and learning the lessons of human empathy. It’s a profoundly important topic, but there’s nothing solemn or stern in this delivery. Statuesque Tavis Kordell fills the key role of Jerry/Daphne with verve—and with a dignity that steers clear of camp. (This role, filled by J. Harrison Ghee on Broadway, made Ghee one of the first two non-binary performers to win a Tony when they won for Best Leading Actor in a Musical in 2023—the same year in which the Boston Theater Critics Association removed gender designations from its Elliot Norton Awards.)

Matt Loehr, Leandra Ellis-Gaston, Tavis Kordell and company

Lopez and Ruffin make those often rendered invisible in the mid-20th century visible. Sugar (Leandra Ellis-Gaston) is no longer a millionaire-hunting gold-digger (as portrayed by Marilyn Monroe in the film). She’s a talented performer whose ambitions are stymied by racism. And Osgood (a whimsical Edward Juvier), rich from root beer during Prohibition, reveals his Mexican heritage to Daphne, the person he loves.

Edward Juvier, Tavis Kordell and the company

Matt Loehr (Joe/Josephine, a white man who champions racial equality) and DeQuina Moore (Sweet Sue, a Black woman who takes charge of her own destiny rather than accept unequal treatment), along with an energetic ensemble of dazzlingly dressed hoofers, round out the strong cast. In the end, this reinvention of Some Like It Hot is both gender- and human-affirming, turning film director Billy Wilder’s outdated mockery of traditional gender roles into a celebration of the power of the feminine, while offering a crowd-pleasing mix of sight and sound.

Tommy Sutter, Jay Owens, Jamie LaVerdiere, and Devon Goffman

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Some Like It Hot
national tour
ends in Boston at Citizen’s Bank Opera House on February 7, 2025
for tickets, visit Broadway in Boston
tour continues; for dates and cities, visit Some Like It Hot

for more shows, visit Theatre in Boston

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BIO: Lynne Weiss is a member of the Boston Theater Critics Association. Her work has also appeared in Literary Ladies Guide and in The Common, Black Warrior Review, and the Ploughshares Blog. She has an MFA from UMass Amherst and has received residencies from Yaddo, the Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center and grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. A lifelong social justice activist, she is at work on a novel set in 1930s Cornwall. Her reviews, travel tales, and progressively optimistic opinions are on her substack.