STAGE WEST: "Working Girl" at La Jolla Playhouse

Joanna "JoJo" Levesque as Tess McGill in the "Working Girl" musical.                 Photo by Rich Soublet II

            La Jolla Playhouse’s world-premiere musical adaptation of “Working Girl” may look like the 1988 film, a likable and successful rom-com disguised as a female empowerment trip, but it sounds like Cyndi Lauper.
            Does it ever!
            Lauper, with a few friends contributing, wrote the poppy music and storytelling lyrics for this new show directed by Christopher Ashley (the outgoing Playhouse artistic director’s last gig at LJP before moving on to Roundabout Theatre Company in NYC). I can’t recall the last time I heard a stage musical written by one composer that was as signature identifiable as this one. From the opening “Something More” to the triumphant “Working Girl" title song, Lauper’s brand of upbeat, catchy-chorus “eighties-ness” resounds. “Working Girl” the musical’s battle-cry is not “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” but “Girls Just Want to Have Fun (and Respect).”
            That’s where the author of the show’s book, Theresa Rebeck, comes in. While the “Working Girl” film was plenty of fun, remember that it was written by a man (Kevin Wade) and directed by a man (Mike Nichols). Rebeck, an experienced playwright and creator for television  (“Smash”) and film as well, has kept “Working Girl” in the 1980s but has elevated its conscience and enlightened its point of view for 2025 audiences. Her script pays more than lip service to the empowering of a heroine. Rebeck’s Tess McGill (played in La Jolla by Joanna “JoJo” Levesque of Broadway’s “Moulin Rouge”) doesn’t stand up for herself in a man’s world all alone – in this “Working Girl” she’s supported by a cadre of fellow Wall Street support staffers united against those who take them for granted and who refuse to value them as not only women but individuals. This isn’t just “Working Girl,” it’s “Working Girls,” as we are reminded at the end of the show.
            The Cyn character, Tess’ BFF memorably portrayed in the “Working Girl” film by Joan Cusack, is a far more prominent, and serious, presence in Rebeck’s adaptation. This Cyn (Ashley Blanchet) is again Tess’ confidante and protector, but like her friend she’s strong, proactive and not to be underestimated.
            The other secretaries are game for having fun with absent boss Katharine’s high-priced, excessive wardrobe closet in one of the musical’s best scenes, but they’re also loyal (well, except for one) compatriots in Tess’ deception to get ahead in the corporate arena, a deception that as in the film is completely justifiable.
            Even the story’s antagonist, the ubiquitous Katharine Parker, is given a makeover in the “Working Girl” musical. While Sigourney Weaver was just about perfection in the role on screen, her character was unlikable, even mean, and her ultimate comeuppance in the film just as mean back at her. (“Get your bony ass out of my sight,” she was told off.) Rebeck gives Lesley Rodriguez Kritzer plentiful opportunity to be snippy and dismissive of Tess (and many others), but there’s far more comedy in the character onstage – she’s almost likable in spite of her faux superiority and robbery of Tess’ grand acquisitions idea. She isn’t banished from the story’s climax with a humiliating insult either.
            Rebeck’s supportive portrayals of the women of “Working Girl” are expressed in song as well, with Lauper giving Tess numbers in which to assert herself, like “Something More” and “When the Penny Drops” and of course the closing, anthemic “Picture It” which finds even the mostly clueless male characters singing along.
            A cool touch, by the by: The accompanying all-woman band at the Playhouse is led by Julie McBride and features Alex “Goldie” Golden on keyboards, Elena Bonomo on drums, Vivi Rama on bass and Meg Toohey on guitars.
            The two principal male characters in this “Working Girl” differ from the film, with mixed results. In the movie Harrison Ford did his best with the rather bland Jack Trainer role, the man Tess collaborates with and finds love with too; here, Jack (Anoop Desai) is from Minnesota but of Indian heritage, and he has much more personality and sense of humor, and more to do.  His cocktail-drinking Act One “Can’t Trust Nobody” is exceeded by the dance-powered “Dream in Royalty” in the second act, both of which broadly belie the image of the money-grubbing Wall Street suit who has no real idea how to enjoy himself away from the market floor.
             Then there’s Rebeck’s reimagination of Mick, the two-timer Tess is involved with. At La Jolla Mick is an aspiring, long-locked rock singer and guitarist – his more-to-do is superfluous. I could have lived without either of the two numbers (“Staring You Right in the Face” and the cringy “Get You Hot”) to which he is central.
            The mini-scenes with Katharine, the “victim” of a skiing accident, in hospitals across the Pond are a delight. So is her marvelously conceived accident scene before them.
            Like a lot of new musicals – and many new plays – “Working Girl” is longer than it needs to be right now and could stand some pruning in spite of how consistently enjoyable it is. Minimizing Mick would be a start. Maybe give Jack one song but not two.
            This staging is technically stunning: AMP Scenography featuring Erica Jiaying Zhang brings electric and seamless transitions onstage from board room to Staten Island Ferry to Katharine’s lush bedroom. Hana S. Kim’s projection design resurrects the glittering steel reaching to the sky and the deep blue harbor of the Big Apple in the late ‘80s. The citified “Working Girl” logo is detailed down to the point of having glowing automobiles moving along beneath it. The city that never sleeps, you know.
            The power suits worn by all the Wall Street types are suitably ‘80s -- they sure look anachronistic by the standards of today's post-COVID, relaxed office attire policies. Linda Cho is this production’s costume designer, with Charles G. LaPointe responsible for (‘80s) hair design and wigs.
            Eye-popping throughout, “Working Girl” already looks like a Broadway show. We’ll see what the future brings.
            Levesque does well as both the big-hair Tess and the aspiring-big-shot Tess, though I didn’t feel any tangible sparks between the character and the Jack character. Her most believable relationship is with Blanchet’s Cyn. They’re a comfortable pairing. Rebeck was intuitive and creative enough to emphasize their deep friendship and to make the lessons the two characters learn together more important than Tess finding her true man.
            I don’t know whether this was intentional when it came to casting, but in “Working Girl” the musical Kritzer’s Katharine and Levesque’s Tess are about the same height, compared to Sigourney Weaver towering three inches over Melanie Griffith in the movie. But regardless, it speaks well to the thought of the two female characters being equals, even if one of them doesn’t want them to be.
            More than a few lines from the original film are preserved in this new musical, among them Cyn’s telling Tess, as a cautionary realization, that dancing around in her underwear “doesn’t make me Madonna.”  Some gems you don’t try to re-polish even when you change mediums.
            “Working Girl” runs through Dec. 14 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre.