NEW YORK — The new musical version of “Some Like It Hot” roars along like the 20th Century Limited, racing from rumba to samba and jive to paso doble, its book unfurling with breakneck zestiness and its fleet-footed dancers and singers speeding so fast from one transition to another that it feels as if someone has lit a fuse and the Shubert Theatre is set to burst into flames every night at 10:30. Imperative for everyone to get out alive!
That’s also true, one suspects, of how the creative artists were first feeling when faced with the task of musicalizing not only one of the most famous movies of the 20th century as directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, but at least the third in a series of movie-to-musicals that have featured a plot involving cross-dressing: “Tootsie,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and now “Some Like It Hot” features a book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman and the ebullient choreographic and directorial stylings of Casey Nicholaw.
The first two titles on that list came in for some criticism, not the least being that the central, white male character was assuming a female persona merely to get what he wanted. In many ways, “Some Like It Hot” was an easier assignment for the stage, given that there were so many gender-subversive and homoerotic themes (”Nobody’s perfect”) in a film that offers a veritable sweaty banquet of human sexuality, a romp in all the best senses of the word.
