Some Like It Hot

by David Anthony Fox

Often I hear people wondering what happened to old-fashioned musicals. I hope these people will take advantage of Some Like It Hot, which should convince even the most reactionary viewer that the good old days weren’t always good.

This is not a new show. Two decades ago, a very similar version of the Jule Styne/Bob Merrill musical -- then called Sugar -- ran on Broadway for just over 500 performances. Presumably, the name change to Some Like It Hot is to tie it closer to the legendary movie comedy on which it is based.

That movie -- a farce about two male musicians who witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and, in order to avoid detection, dress up as women and join an all-girl band -- was, in its way, perfect. Billy Wilder's script made its own comic music. And the cast -- Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe at her most luminous -- can never be equaled.

Some Like It Hot didn't need to be a musical. It certainly didn't need to be this musical, which is utterly uninspired.

There are a few low-rent pleasures, including some tap-dancing gangsters and a chorus line of leggy blond beauties. (The latter really need to be called a "bevy," a word I never thought I'd have occasion to write, but there you are.)

And there the charms stop. The music and lyrics -- how to put this nicely? -- suck. The only wit to be found in Peter Stone's book is that which he takes from Wilder's original script.

There is no earthly reason for this 20th-anniversary production, but there is an unearthly one: Tony Curtis is back, now playing the supporting part of an elderly letch, chasing after one of our in-drag "heroines."

Today's Tony Curtis is not yesterday's. Trussed up and sporting a pouffy pompadour, his gestures -- in the context of playing a womanizer -- are disconcertingly effeminate. The total effect is difficult to describe yet unforgettable. Imagine Rip Taylor playing The Producers' Carmen Ghia and you have some sense of it. And Curtis' singing (yes, he gamely tries to sing) is as, uh, idiosyncratic as his appearance.

The other actors (Arthur Hanket and Timothy Gulan as the boys, Jodi Carmeli in the Marilyn Monroe part) do what they can, but the evening is completely shaped by the show itself and Mr. Curtis, which you can take however you like.

Some Like it Hot

Through April 6, The Playhouse Theatre, 11th and Market sts., Wilmington, Del., 800-338-0881.