In the 1988 film Working Girl, an assistant secretly stays at her absentee boss's apartment, admires its opulence with her best friend, and tries on a $6,000 dress.
New music version from the beloved film recreates this iconic scene with nine women on stage. They enter the glamorous home sporting voluminous perms, shoulder-padded blazers and white athletic trainers—the latter for trips from the outer boroughs to Manhattan—and take turns admiring tweed Chanel suits, silk Versace robes and vintage Hermès scarves. They then quickly change into fabulous metallic dresses, and with the help of LED panels and light signals, the bedroom is transformed into a fashion catwalk with glitzy secretaries singing and dancing in feminine revelry. And this spectacular dress? It now costs $7,000.
That moment epitomizes the approach of this adaptation, which opens its world premiere Tuesday at the La Jolla Playhouse: Take the movie's most memorable parts and turn up the volume on stage. The result: an unabashed celebration of women, theater and everything else about the 1980s, led by the quintessential musician who embodies it all: Cyndi Lauper.
Cyndi Lauper in New York in September.
(Larsen and Talbert / For The Times)
“I want audiences to have fun – to laugh, to cry, to get up and feel like they can do it all too,” Lauper said of the show, which has already been renewed through Dec. 7. “It's not like you can walk into your boss's closet and wear her clothes, no! But it's the exciting feeling of living in the city in the '80s and being creative and not backing down.”
A corporate Cinderella story, the 20th Century Fox comedy starred Melanie Griffith as Tess, a headstrong secretary at a Wall Street brokerage firm who learns that her boss Katherine has taken credit for her business proposal. When a skiing accident keeps Katherine out of the office, Tess poses as her boss to team up with Jack—an investment broker played by Harrison Ford—and pitch her idea to the top brass herself.
Directed by Mike Nichols, Working Girl was nominated for six Academy Awards, praising the performances of Griffith, Sigourney Weaver as the delightfully ruthless Catherine and Joan Cusack as best friend Tess Sin. “The tacit recognition of the barriers that hold back the Qings and Tess, and the lack of leniency towards them in the direction and in [the] The script makes Working Girl one of the warmest films Nichols has ever touched.” praised The Times film critic Sheila Benson in her review.
Because the plot of Working Girl is set in the 80s: “If you tried to impersonate an executive today, people would Google you and it would be all over!” director Christopher Ashley joked, “the musical fully reflects the aesthetics of the era in costumes, choreography and, of course, music. “Sonically, there was a lot of personality at the time, so many new sounds and genres,” recalls Lauper, a born-and-bred New Yorker who briefly worked as an office assistant before her career took off. (Agent Lauper even suggested she audition for the role of Tess in the film.)
With the launch of MTV, “in the 80s we for the first time I'm watching music,” she continued. – For example, when we first saw Annie Lennox in the boardroom in this suit with her fist on the table.looking right at us and saying, “This is what sweet dreams are made of,” oh my god, that stopped you in your tracks. It wasn't just her androgynous look or her hair color that was stunning, but the fact that perhaps for the first time we got a real sense of who she was, because music videos were where artists had complete control over the creative process. Anyway, there was a lot going on back then and we wanted it all to be in the show.”
Lauper – whose debut appearance in the theater, 2013 Broadway hit “Kinky Boots” won six Tony Awards, including for original music, and has been composing “Working Girl” for ten years. To create songs for the five-piece group that fully reflect the diversity of music of the era – electronica, hip-hop, hair metal and more – Lauper recruited her “Time After Time” co-writer Rob Hyman of the Hooters, Cheryl James of the rap group Salt-N-Pepa and Sammy James Jr., who wrote the theme song for the film School of Rock. (Carly Simon's original Oscar-winning song “Let the River Run” is not included in the score.)
Harrison Ford, Melanie Griffith (center) and Sigourney Weaver (right) in Mike Nichols' 1988 comedy-drama Working Girl.
(20th Century Fox)
“Working Girl” is the latest hit comedy to try to make the transition from '80s cinema to musical theater, following “9 to 5,” “Big,” “Beetlejuice,” “Footloose,” “Tootsie” and “Back to the Future.” Not all of these games caught on, either critically or commercially.
“I think some musicals try to bring back the exact lightning in a movie bottle,” Ashley said. “We were lucky that Kevin Wade, the writer of the film, passed it on to us and said, 'Take what's useful and remake what you need.'
Joanna “JoJo” Levesque (left) and star Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer in the musical adaptation of the 1988 film “Working Girl” outside the La Jolla Theater.
(Ariana Dresler/For The Times)
The production stars Joanna “JoJo” Levesque as Tess, who Levesque says is “a little rougher” on stage. “We're drawing on her working-class background because we're really telling a story about class, about the haves and the have-nots. And in the times we live in, that's important to talk about.” (Yes, Tess still says her legendary line: “I have a head for business and a body for sin.”)
Likewise, Levesque's co-star Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer teased that her Katherine has moments of cheerful, boisterous energy, a hallmark of Kritzer's character. However, she remains as statuesque and ruthless as Weaver was on screen. “This is my third movie musical adaptation,” said Kritzer, who has roles in the musicals “Legally Blonde” and “Beetlejuice.” Every time, “it's about figuring out how to do it differently but still give the audience what they want.”
Although Tess and Katherine are rivals on the show, veteran stage actor Kritzer has become something of a mentor to Levesque, a pop star who entered the theater scene with 2023's appearance in Broadway's “Moulin Rouge!” and plays the role for the first time. In rehearsals, they help each other draw on key vocal influences: Lennox, Pat Benatar, Roxette, Joan Jett, Patti Smith, Blondie and Lauper herself. On stage, the secretaries collectively repeat the same “women helping women” approach that can inspire any girl watching.
“There is so much beauty in Cindy's writing about dreaming big and using hope as fuel,” said writer Teresa Rebeck. “Companies continued to be bought and split up in the '80s, but our history celebrates fighting for opportunity and coming together to create something new. It was important then and it is important now.”
So will today's working girls like all this? “In my experience, a lot of kids like '80s music,” Lauper said. “I’m always surprised how many kids are in my audience.”
