Some Like It Hot is showing at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, California on Thursday, August 7, at 7:30 pm. The screening is co-hosted by Segerstrom Centre for the Arts in nearby Costa Mesa, where the touring production of Some Like It Hot: The Musical is playing in October.
“The premise of Billy Wilder’s critically acclaimed 1959 comedy, Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, is almost as famous as its stars. Two jazz musicians witness a mob hit and disguise themselves as women in order to escape town as members of an all-female band.
Hilarity ensues as the men fall in love with the band’s lead singer (Monroe) while struggling to maintain their feminine wiles. The film faced and overcame threats of censorship when it became a major hit despite pushing boundaries around how gender and sexuality could be portrayed in mainstream cinema. Still, the men-in-ladies-clothing bit was a gag — riotous and ribald.
Updating that aspect of the story for the 21st century, without beating audiences over the head with a message, became crucial to the creative team behind the 2022 musical, including book writers Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman, and lyricist Scott Wittman.
Their innovation was making Lemmon’s character — a stand-up bass player named Jerry who disguises himself as a woman named Daphne — realise that he identifies more as female, and decides to remain so.
The line that received the biggest round of applause during the L.A. premiere of the show at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre on Wednesday came toward the end when Daphne’s partner and best friend, Joe (disguised as Josephine), asks what he should call his pal going forward: Jerry or Daphne.
‘Either is fine as long as you do it with love and respect,’ Daphne replies.
Cue tears and cheers — no matter what city the show is playing in, said Wittman in a phone interview. ‘They’ll say that in places like Nebraska and Idaho and that’s where the biggest roar has been,’ he said.
The moment feels good to crowds, in part, because it comes so honestly to the performer portraying Daphne. North Carolina native Tavis Kordell, 23, is a nonbinary actor who came into the fullness of their identity about three years ago. Their transformation from Jerry to Daphne onstage is tender, visceral and — by the show’s conclusion — total.
Art, with its inherent ability to engender empathy in audiences, is a powerful vehicle for change in this complex and often heartbreaking moment in history for the LGBTQ+ community, said Kordell and Shaiman. Seeing the kindness in people’s responses to the show, including in the many letters both the writer and performer have received, has been particularly affecting.”
– Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times
The Marilyn Report 