In “Working Girl,” a rising Melanie Griffith played Tess McGill, a Staten Island secretary with big hair and even bigger dreams. She thought her new boss (played by Sigourney Weaver in the 1988 Mike Nichols film) would be an ally, since they were both women trying to make it in a man’s world, but just because Katharine Parker hadn’t hiked up her skirt, as Tess’s male superiors had done, didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to stab her in the back.
The stars of the budding Broadway musical currently playing at the La Jolla Playhouse are not Tess and Katherine, but the 1980s themselves: poofy bangs and copious hairspray, nylon stockings and shoulder pads, briefcase-sized boomboxes and synthesizer-driven pop music (provided here by Cyndi Lauper, whose music and lyrics sound much more like her Top 40 hits than her work on “Kinky”). Boots”). For the audience, it’s fun to find yourself transported back in time, even if it’s strange to feel nostalgic for a less enlightened decade, where greed was good, fashion was tacky, and distaff female office workers were objectified by their male colleagues.
But “9 a.m. to 5 p.m.” is not the case. Where that film — and the Dolly Parton-backed Broadway musical it inspired — were high-spirited and empowering, offering a fun, extreme response to workplace chauvinism, “Working Girl” feels like it could have made a sharper play, given how plot-driven Kevin Wade’s original screenplay was. Catchy enough to warrant radio play, Lauper’s songs have the tricky task of sounding both hip (by contemporary standards) and retro, like a newly discovered pop album originally recorded in the ’80s and then lost to time.
From its can-do number, which features Tess (Joanna “JoJo” Levesque) riding the Staten Island Ferry to work, Lauper’s music packs a period-appropriate kick — assuming you can look past the state-of-the-art LED screens, on which images of the Statue of Liberty depict the hardest working girl in New York. To hear Tess tell it, she’s “looking for something more” – an “I Want” song as open as any musical could ask for.
The problem is that Tess’s ambitions aren’t taken seriously in the testosterone-driven financial field she works in: mergers and acquisitions. In a typical setback, Tess learns that she was not accepted into the executive training program (penalized for rebuffing the unwanted advances of a superior, to be precise). The opportunity goes to a male “jerk”, while Tess is reassigned to the office of her company’s newest hire – who, to Tess’s surprise, turns out to be a woman.
His first piece of advice comes from Coco Chanel, a model: “Dress poorly and they notice the dress. Dress impeccably and they notice the woman.” Tess’s new boss swears they’ll stay together, but it doesn’t take long for Tess to discover that she’s stolen his big idea: encouraging a client named Trask (Michael Genet) to buy a radio network, instead of the television station he had in mind.
While Katharine spent much of the film off-screen, the musical expands her role, giving the actress who plays her (in this case, Broadway veteran Lesley Rodriguez Kritzer) more scenes and more songs than Weaver had in the film. She also gets the most laughs in the series, spiraling through the air and into a hospital bed during a ski vacation.
While Katharine is asleep (“she’s calling” to sing from her hospital bed), Tess steps into her boss’ shoes — literally, borrowing his designer clothes from the closet makeover number “Notice the Wife” — and steals the business contact who can broker the deal, Jack Trainer (Anoop Desai, far from Harrison Ford but still the romantic lead). The two have chemistry, sending sparks flying in the show’s best duet, “Can’t Trust Nobody,” although neither is 100% available…or 100% trustworthy.
“Working Girl” has more intrigue than your typical musical needs and only a fraction lends itself to farce. Tess crashing Trask’s daughter’s wedding should be hilarious, but instead it feels crowded and unclear. And taking a break right after you’ve nailed your pitch seems like a strange place to take a break. Wouldn’t Katharine’s return make more sense, leaving the audience wondering how “The Little People” will continue the charade, now that the cat has come home (“I’m Back”)? Is it hard enough to fill out the second half, as evidenced by Jack’s quirky but fun breakdancing scene (“Dream in Royalty”)?
Among the most intriguing changes is the idea that Tess is not alone in her fight, but aided by a half-dozen female colleagues, so much so that they might have called the show “Working Girls,” if Mike Leigh hadn’t gotten there first. As she climbs the ranks, Tess loses sight of those whose shoulders she stood on, especially her best friend Cyn (Ashley Blanchet 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 resembles Jon Bon Jovi. In a clever fit, he sings in a band. Trying to win Tess back after their breakup, Mick’s jam “Get You Hot” sounds eerily similar to “Living on a Prayer.” It’s one of the strangest things about Lauper’s songs: Many of them sound a few notes removed from true ’80s favorites, none more so than the title number, which echoes her own instantly recognizable hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” It’s a catchy song, even if the memories of that earlier song send exactly the wrong message in a show where the girls just want to be taken seriously.
