IN “Working girl“, career-driven Melanie Griffith embodied Tess McGill, a Staten Island secretary with big hair and even bigger dreams. She thought her new boss (played by Sigourney Weaver in Mike Nichols' 1988 film) would be her ally since they were both women trying to make it in a man's world, but only because Katherine Parker didn't hike up her skirt like the male bosses did. Tess didn't do this, which means she won't try to stab her in the back.
The stars of the Broadway-bound musical are now performing on stage La Jolla Theater this isn't Tess and Katherine, but the 1980s themselves: big bangs and copious amounts of hairspray, nylons and shoulder pads, briefcase-sized boomboxes and synth pop music (represented by Cyndi Lauper, whose music and lyrics are reminiscent of her Top 40 far more than her work on “Kinky Boots”). It's nice for viewers to be transported back in time, although it's strange to feel nostalgic for a less enlightened decade when greed was good, fashion was tacky and spinning wheel office assistants were objectified by their male colleagues.
But “9 to 5” is not like that. While that film—and the Dolly Parton-backed Broadway musical it inspired—was peppy and uplifting, serving as an amusingly extreme response to workplace chauvinism, it feels like Working Girl could have been an edgier play, given how story-driven Kevin Wade's original script was. Catchy enough to warrant airplay, Lauper's songs have the difficult task of simultaneously sounding hip (by modern standards) and retro, like a newly discovered pop album originally recorded back in the '80s and then lost to time.
Beginning with a mood-setting number in which Tess (JoAnne “JoJo” Levesque) rides the Staten Island Ferry to work, Lauper's score carries a period-correct spirit—provided you can look behind the state-of-the-art LED screens, which feature images of the Statue of Liberty representing New York's hardest-working gal. Tess says she's “looking for something more” – as open an “I want” song as any musical can get.
The problem is that Tess's ambitions aren't taken seriously in the testosterone-driven financial industry where she works: mergers and acquisitions. In a typical mishap, Tess learns that she has been left out of the executive training program (or rather, punished for refusing her boss's unwanted advances). Instead, the opportunity goes to a male “idiot” while Tess is reassigned to the desk of her company's last employee, who, to Tess' surprise, turns out to be a woman.
Her first piece of advice comes from no less a role model than Coco Chanel: “Dress sloppily and they'll notice the dress. Dress impeccably and they'll notice the woman.” Tess's new boss vows that they will stick together, but Tess soon discovers that she stole her big idea – to get a client named Trask (Michael Genet) to buy a radio network instead of the TV channel he had in mind.
Although Katherine spent most of the film behind the scenes, the musical expands her role, giving the actress who plays her (in this case, Broadway veteran Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer) more scenes and more songs than Weaver had in the film. She also gets the biggest laughs of the series by flying through the air and ending up in a hospital bed during a ski vacation.
While Katherine lies (“calling” to sing from her hospital bed), Tess steps into her boss's shoes – literally borrowing her designer clothes in the cross-dressing number “Notice the Woman” – and steals a business contact who could broker the deal, Jack Trainer (Anoop Desai, far from Harrison Ford but still every bit the romantic hero). These two have a chemistry that sparks the show's best duet, “Can't Trust No One,” even though neither is 100% available… or 100% trustworthy.
“Working Girl” has more plot than your typical musical needs, and only part of it lends itself to slapstick. Tess, who crashes Trask's daughter's wedding, should be cheerful, but instead feels overwhelmed and incomprehensible. And the intermission break right after she's successfully delivered her speech seems like an odd place to pause. Wouldn't Katherine's return make more sense, leaving viewers wondering how Little People will continue this charade now that the cat is back home (“I'm Back”)? It's quite difficult to fill the second half, as evidenced inappropriately, but Jack's funny breakdancing scene (“Dream Royal”)?
Among the most intriguing changes is the idea that Tess is not alone in her struggle, but is helped by a half-dozen female co-stars, to the point that they might have called the show Working Girls if Mike Leigh hadn't gotten there first. As Tess makes her way up the stairs, she loses sight of those on whose shoulders she stood—especially her best friend Cyn (Ashley Blanchett as Joan Cusack), to whom she will have to apologize before the show ends (their song “You and Me” could pass for a retro radio hit).
Tess also has a boyfriend, Mick (Joey Tanato), who looks like Val Kilmer and talks like Jon Bon Jovi. He sings in a group. Trying to win Tess back after their breakup, Mick's jam “Get You Hot” bears an uncanny resemblance to “Living on a Prayer.” That's one of the odd things about Lauper's songs: many of them sound a few notes removed from the true '80s favorites, with little more than a title number that echoes her own instantly recognizable hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” It's a catchy tune, although flashbacks to that previous song send exactly the wrong message to a show where the girls just want to be taken seriously.
