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music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman, book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, directed by Casey Nicholaw

David and Hannah Mirvish, CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria Street, Toronto

February 12–March 15, 2026

Daphne and Sweet Sue: “The world’s a great big candy store / So let your tootsie roll”

According to the American Film Institute’s list “100 Years … 100 Laughs”, Some Like It Hot from 1959 is the funniest American film comedy of all time. This gives any adaptation of the film a lot to live up to. Thus, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the 2022 musical based on the film falls short. Partially this is due to the laugh-free book by Matthew López, author of the epic gay play The Inheritance (2018), and comedian Amber Ruffin, who oddly want to give the farce a serious purpose. Partially this is due to songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman of Hairspray (2002) fame, who imitate Cole Porter without ever coming up with something memorable. Given a variable cast, the musical of Some Like It Hot is only lukewarm.

López and Ruffin generally follow the plot of the screenplay written by European ex-pats I. A. L. Diamond and director Billy Wilder. In Chicago in 1933 two musicians, Joe and Jerry, witness the mob leader Spats commit mass murder. They are seen and decide to disguise themselves as women to join an all-female band that is just leaving on tour. One of the pair, Joe, is immediately struck by the band’s lead singer Sugar. The other finds himself being wooed by a millionaire. All would be well until Spats shows up again and recognizes them.

López and Ruffin decide to make the all-White cast of the film racially diverse in the musical. This in itself, of course, is not a problem, What is a problem is that López and Ruffin also feel the need have them speak or sing of the challenges that they have encountered in a White-dominant world. Thus, Joe is offered a job but without Jerry to demonstrate prejudice against Jerry which leads to a song where Joe defends Jerry as his brother. Shaiman and Wittman give Sugar, played by Marilyn Monroe in the film, a song about how she and “people like her” had to sit in a separate area of her local cinema.

López and Ruffin’s attempt to lend social relevance to what is essentially a sex farce may be well-intentioned, but it goes completely counter to the genre of the show which is all about theatricality, not real life experiences. The push toward relevance leads to the telling of background stories that have nothing to do with main plot and stop the action in its tracks.

López and Ruffin’s worst idea is to try to concoct an explanation for the film’s famous final dialogue between Jerry, dressed as the woman Daphne, and the millionaire Osgood Fielding III:

Jerry: “But you don’t understand, Osgood! Ohh... [removes wig] I’m a man!”

Osgood: [shrugs] “Well, nobody’s perfect!”

The point is Osgoode’s surprising nonchalance — an attitude in complete variance with homophobic attitudes of the time. Lopez and Ruffin decide that wearing woman’s clothes causes a great awakening in Jerry, which leads him to realize that dressing as a woman is who he is. Shaiman and Wittman give him a whole song “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With a Feather” to explain it. Again, López and Ruffin have good intentions but the over-explanation it leads to totally ruins the shock of the ending that accepts the forbidden with a shrug. Here there’s nothing forbidden and the character literally makes a whole song and dance about it. It doesn’t really matter what specific issues López and Ruffin are trying to amplify. The question is whether farce which is at its funniest when at its silliest is really the right forum for serious issues.

Nevertheless, a great score would help overcome the start-stop rhythm that delving into serious issues causes. Unfortunately, Some Like It Hot conspicuously lacks a great score. Shaiman and Wittman are so focussed on imitating Cole Porter and 1930s dance tunes that they forget to create anything original or memorable. The closest they come to this is in the song “Let’s Be Bad”. Even the title song fails and can’t even work the words “some like it hot” into a prominent position in the refrain.

It must be admitted that Shaiman and Wittman’s songs are not well served in the present production. A problem all through the show is that the lyrics to most of the songs are unintelligible. Partially, this is because the sound engineers allow the band to overwhelm the voices of the weaker singers. Partially, it is because the singers simply do not enunciate clearly so that between the first line of the song and its refrain everything comes out as mush. It turns out that Shaiman and Wittman’s lyrics are often quite witty, but I found this out only by reading them online not by hearing them in the theatre.

In bringing the work of Shaiman, Wittman, López and Ruffin to the stage, some cast members fare better than others. Matt Loehr and Tavis Kordell play Joe and Jerry, who in the musical are not merely two musicians but also are known for their tap-dancing as the Tip-Tap Twins. Loehr has a strong voice that easily cuts through the band’s accompaniment, but even he cannot make all his words clearly understandable. He is very funny when he takes on the persona of the frumpy Josephine and captures the tension, so prominent in the film, of being attracted to a woman while in drag but remembering that he can’t get too flirty or he’ll blow his disguise.

Kordell is the Black partner of the White Loehr. Kordell’s voice is both noticeably higher and softer than Loehr’s and, sadly, usually does not carry over the band. I often thought that Kordell’s mic should be turned up a notch to match Loehr’s volume. In any case the two make fine tap-dance partners. Unlike Loehr, Kordell who is nonbinary, does not change their voice when they adopt their Daphne persona. They put a lot of passion into Daphne’s big coming out song to Joe, “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With a Feather”, but even here we get only the gist of what Kordell is singing rather than all the words.

Taxed with the role of lead singer Sugar, Leandra Ellis-Gaston wisely makes no attempt to imitate Marilyn Monroe who created the role in the film. Yet she also does not come up with any strong personality traits to substitute for Monroe’s inimitable combination of innocence and sex-appeal. Ellis-Gaston has a well-modulated voice when speaking and in singing sounds best in her lower register. Unfortunately, once she puts any pressure on her voice, it becomes constricted and nasal to the point that it does not seem realistic that she should be the star performer of Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators.

This fact stands out all the more whenever DeQuina Moore sings as Sweet Sue. Moore is an old-school belter and trumps in volume every other member of the cast. Her jazz and soul stylings suit the period and make Sweet Sue a character who completely overshadows Ellis-Gaston’s Sugar. The main flaw in Moore’s performance is a tendency in the dialogue to play Sweet Sue way over the top.

Edward Juvier is a rather meek, high-voiced Osgood Fielding III. Juvier gives the impression, quite unlike the stolid Joe E. Brown in the film, that Osgood sees through Jerry’s disguise as “Daphne” early on. The sappy song that Shaiman and Wittman give Osgood, “Fly, Mariposa, Fly”, about a metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly, hints heavily that Osgood knows about Daphne’s transformation and thinks it’s lovely. The song is essentially a long, drawn-out equivalent of the terse, comic “Nobody’s perfect!” of the film.

Director Casey Nicholaw has directed and choreographed several big hits on Broadway including The Drowsy Chaperone (2006), The Book of Mormon (2011) and Aladdin (2014). Given such a resumé it’s disappointing that the choreography in Some Like It Hot, a tap-dance musical, tends toward the repetitive and unexciting. The show starts out with a bang with the Lindy Hop number “What Are You Thirsty For?” Nicholaw pulls out all the stops and includes such extreme moves as leg pull-throughs and around the world lifts. Nicholaw packs so much into this number I wondered what he had left over for the rest of the show.

The answer turned out to be nothing much. Only the wild tap-dance chase through the Hotel Del Corondo near the end is as exciting. There Nicholaw has the ensemble shift about doors in rolling door-frames while dancers exit and enter through them. At one point six door are lined up across the stage and there is so much going and coming you can’t keep track who has gone where.

Fans of the 1959 film should not feel the need to see the musical version since it lacks both the pace and subtlety of the film. Those looking simply for a fun night out may wonder why it seems that the show finds it so difficult to be funny. Certainly, framing the farce as a story of self-acceptance hardly lightens the mood. But more than this, Nicholaw uncharacteristically directs with a heavy hand so that the cast appear to be working to make scenes funny rather than simply being funny. There are scenes to enjoy during the show’s 2¾ hours, but they are few and far between. If you do see the show, just rent the movie later and see why not all great movies can be made into great musicals.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Matt Loehr as Joe, Leandra Ellis-Gaston as Sugar and Tavis Kordell (centre) with ensemble; Tavis Kordell as Jerry and Matt Loehr as Joe; the Ensemble of Some Like It Hot; DeQuina Moore (centre) as Sweet Sue with ensemble. © 2026 Matthew Murphy.

For tickets visit: www.mirvish.com.