Last night I attended the opening night for the Highlands Little Theater production of "9 to 5: The Musical" an adaption of the Broadway play itself adapted from the well-known 1980 film "9 to 5."
Now, I absolutely love the movie and have seen it many times so when I found out our local theater group was doing the musical of it, I didn't hesitate to grab my ticket. And at just $25 for primo seating, it was quite the bargain. But, need I remind myself and you, this is not a major production traveling Broadway production group. It's small town local theater. Compared to here, even local Orlando troupes are big time. And, I'm sorry to say after it's all said and done, even the small-ish Orlando Shakes performances were worlds better than this. But, at least it wasn't Rollins College level crap. Whew!
The theater is small, even by standards such as college campus productions. Heck, I think even moderately-sized high school auditoriums would be bigger. (FYI My hometown high school auditorium was bigger than this) But the staff here were tremendous, making you feel very welcome. The place does have a small bar area that seemed well appointed and again, staffed with really friendly folks. The crowd, as to be expected for a small rural town, was quite country. But they gussied up well enough. And since, like many of the Bob Carr audiences I'd experienced, they were mainly of the blue-haired set, they knew how to act sophisticated even if they weren't. That's one of the few benefits of age. Some of the old hens behind me could be heard asking each other what the definition of a "Playbill" was. Oh bless their hearts.
Right from the get go, I noticed the sound was a bit low. I think either they didn't want to blow out the frail and decrepit eardrums of the oldster audience members or their cheap sound system just could ratchet up past #6 anymore. The theater being the tiny size it was...it might have been better had they shunned the electronic audio system and gone true acoustics with vocal projection. The vocals of our troupe were good enough to have done that. In fact, I really feel that in many instances, they range of the singers were pulled back due to this. In one song, when the character playing Doralee was belting out her lines, the mic cut out a bit as she hit the voluminous notes. I bet if there were no mics, she could have let her lungs fill well and boldly broadcast her voice for all to admire. She had that quality and I hate when a production's technical issues diminish that.
The set design and costuming were the other two issues I had. Over simplistic and cheap looking sets. Reminded me again of the horrible design at the Rollins College production. Same with the costumes. Anachronistic. (The suits and dresses were more "Mad Men meets How to Succeed in Business" than the 1979 time period it was supposed to focus on.) Maybe they were leftover costumes from a performance of "How to Succeed...?" If so, I hope they do it again...gosh knows I loved the Orlando Philharmonic performance I saw of that show!
And mind you, I know small productions like this have basically a zero dollar budget. But I bet you I could have come up with better set pieces and costumes for the same price. It's all a matter of knowing what you are looking for. An untrained Millennial wouldn't likely know mid-century from late seventies if you showed them based on a couple of examples. It kinda takes college-level art history, a flair for decor and style nuances and, lets face it, good old experience.
Overall, the show was a bit of a let down. And I don't put the fault entirely on the performers or the direction. In more than a few instances, I likes the show I saw tonight better than one I've seen of the Broadway one. Well, the Broadway run did only last 5 months so that says volumes there I guess. The writing was flawed. In some important ways, it deviated from the movie plot when I felt it shouldn't. And in some of the added material specific to the musical, namely some of the songs, it just didn't speak to me. I never got the feeling of triumph I got when seeing the film. And that, especially in this age of women speaking out against the culture of discrimination against them they've had to endure all these decades, is the real tragedy. This theme alone should have sang true and clear and well, it seems to have fallen just short of that.
One small example: In the original film, a single-mother Hispanic woman is fired from the company because she isn't able to negotiate a more flexible schedule for herself due to her familial commitments. In this production, she is fired because she is caught asking co-workers about wage discrepancies between the male and females employees. The film version makes us feel that Hart is "heartless" in that he is uncaring about the plight of a single mom juggling homelife and work. In this version, it's about pay inequality due to gender, but, done in a way that makes us a little less endearing to the employee since snooping around asking co-workers what they make to gauge pay equality is a rather inappropriate and intrusive way to go about it. They should have stuck with the original concept. I think the reason they didn't is because of another issue of our time...the avoidance of seeming politically incorrect. Depicting an Hispanic woman as a single mom smacks of prejudicial trope. But the reality of it is, I bet that employee would rather have had a flex schedule to accommodate her familial commitments than being paid the exact same rate as a male worker making a little bit more.
Our three leading ladies did sing quite well, especially Hannah Summer playing Doralee doing a spot on impression of Dolly Parton playing Doralee. The actress playing Roz, Kate McIntyre, played up a song expressing her love of her boss in a way uniquely different and entirely more baudy from the Broadway show with great success. And, having far less of a production venue and budget, they improvised well curtailing scenes of the show to fit this meager stage. They did what they could.
Well I guess that's the crux of it. They did what they could. They punched their timecards and did the job they were tasked to do...somewhat entertain the soon-to-be-interred small town elderly community with their quirky nostalgia piece recalling how we all, at one time in our long ago pre-retirement past, had to deal with the frustrations of the 9 to 5 life.