In “Working Girl,” an upwardly mobile Melanie Griffith embodied Tess McGill, a secretary from Staten Island with big hair and even bigger dreams. She thought her new boss (played by Sigourney Weaver in the 1988 Mike Nichols movie) would be an ally, since they were both women trying to make it in a man’s world, but just because Katharine Parker didn’t reach up her skirt, the way Tess’ male superiors had, didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to stab her in the back.
The stars of the Broadway-aspiring stage musical now showing at the La Jolla Playhouse are not Tess and Katherine, but the 1980s themselves: poofy bangs and copious hairspray, nylon stockings and shoulder pads, boomboxes the size of briefcases and synthesizer-driven pop music (supplied here by Cyndi Lauper, whose music and lyrics resemble her Top 40 a lot more than her work on “Kinky Boots”). For the audience, it’s fun to find themselves transported back in time, even as it’s strange to feel nostalgic for a less enlightened decade, when greed was good, fashion was tacky and distaff office assistants were objectified by their male colleagues.
But “9 to 5” this is not. Where that movie — and the Dolly Parton-backed Broadway musical it inspired — were peppy and empowering, serving up an amusingly extreme answer to workplace chauvinism, “Working Girl” feels like it might 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 simultaneously hip (by contemporary standards) and retro, like a recently unearthed pop album originally recorded back in the ’80s, then lost to time.
From its attitude-setting number, which finds 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 ultra-modern LED screens, on which images of the Statue of Liberty represent the hardest working gal in New York. To hear Tess tell it, she’s “looking for something more” — as open-ended an “I want” song as any musical could ask for.
The trouble is, Tess’ ambitions aren’t taken seriously in the testosterone-driven financial sphere where she works: mergers and acquisitions. In a typical setback, Tess learns that she’s been passed over for the executive training program (penalized for rebuffing a superior’s unwelcome advances, to be precise). The opportunity goes to a male “moron” instead, while Tess gets reassigned to the desk of her company’s latest hire — who, to Tess’ surprise, turns out to be a woman.
Her first bit of advice comes from no less a role model than Coco Chanel: “Dress shabbily and they notice the dress. Dress impeccably and they notice the woman.” Tess’ new boss swears they’ll stick together, but it’s not long before Tess discovers that she has stolen her big idea — encouraging a client named Trask (Michael Genet) to purchase a radio network, instead of the TV station he had in mind.
Whereas Katharine spent much of the film offscreen, the musical expands her part, giving the actress who plays her (in this case, Broadway vet Lesley Rodriguez Kritzer) more scenes and more songs than Weaver had in the movie. She also gets the show’s biggest laugh, spiraling through the air and into a hospital bed during a ski vacation.
While Katharine is laid up (“calling in” to sing from her hospital bed), Tess steps into her boss’ shoes — literally, borrowing her designer clothes in the closet-raiding makeover number “Notice the Woman” — and steals the business contact who can broker the deal, Jack Trainer (Anoop Desai, a far cry from Harrison Ford but still every bit the romantic lead). The two have chemistry, sending sparks in the show’s best duet, “Can’t Trust Nobody,” though neither is 100% available … or 100% trustworthy.
“Working Girl” has more plot than your typical musical needs and only a fraction of it lends itself to farce. Tess crashing the wedding of Trask’s daughter ought to be hilarious, but instead feels overcrowded and unclear. And breaking for intermission right after she’s successfully made her pitch seems an odd place to pause. Wouldn’t Katharine’s return make more sense, leaving audiences to wonder how “The Little People” will keep up the charade, now that the cat has come home (“I’m Back”)? It’s tough enough to fill out the second half, as evidenced by the out-of-place but amusing scene of Jack breakdancing (“Dream in Royalty”)?
Among the more intriguing changes is the idea that Tess is not alone in her struggle, but helped along by half a dozen female colleagues, to the extent that they might have called the show “Working Girls,” if Mike Leigh hadn’t gotten there first. Clawing her way up the ladder, Tess loses sight of those whose shoulders she stood on — especially best friend Cyn (Ashley Blanchet in the Joan Cusack role), with whom she’ll have to apologize before show’s end (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 sounds like Jon Bon Jovi. In a clever tweak, he sings in a band. Trying to win Tess back after they break up, Mick’s “Get You Hot” jam bears an uncanny resemblance to “Living on a Prayer.” That’s one of the stranger things about Lauper’s songs: A lot of them sound a few notes removed from actual ’80s faves, none more than the title number, which echoes her own instantly recognizable hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” It’s a catchy tune, though memories of that earlier song send exactly the wrong message in a show where girls just want to be taken seriously.
