Review: San Diego-themed ‘Some Like It Hot’ tour kicks up some fun

By Pam Kragen | [email protected] | The San Diego Union-Tribune

UPDATED: January 30, 2025 at 1:34 PM PST

The first time I saw the Broadway musical “Some Like it Hot,” it was still in previews in New York City in December 2022.

I loved director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw’s affectionate wink to the madcap musical films of the 1930s, his dazzling tap-dance numbers and his epic, farce-like “chase scene” in Act Two. And book co-writers Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin brought diversity and a modern sensibility to the musical’s source material, a 1959 Billy Wilder film about two male musicians disguising themselves as women in an all-girl band to hide out from Chicago mobsters. Plus the show had fun music and lavish costume by San Diego-raised Gregg Barnes.

But I wondered how the show might fare on tour outside progressive New York, particularly with the nation’s newly ramped-up war on “wokeness.” In the movie, the men’s cross-dressing as women (and the romantic chaos that ensues) is played solely for laughs. In the stage adaptation, one of the two men discovers and ultimately embraces their non-binary identity, as both Jerry and Daphne.

On Wednesday night at the San Diego Civic Theatre, where the first national tour of “Some Like It Hot” is playing through Sunday, the audience warmly embraced the show. They loved the dance and chase scenes, they loved Daphne and they cheered the musical’s re-setting at our very own Hotel del Coronado (where the original movie was filmed in 1958).

Leading the touring company as the two musicians are Matt Loehr as the sax player Joe/Josephine and Tavis Kordell as bass player Jerry/Daphne.

Edward Juvier, left, as Osgood and Tavis Kordell, as Daphne, in the national touring production of "Some Like It Hot." (Matthew Murphy)

Loehr has a gritty edge as the hustler-like musician struggling for work in the Great Depression and is amusingly deadpan as Josephine. Kordell — who, like the role’s Tony-winning originator J. Harrison Ghee, is non-binary — brings a wonderful sensitivity and grace to their character, particularly in the well-written coming-out number “You Coulda Knocked Me Over with a Feather.”

Big-voiced Leandra Ellis-Gaston is a charming scene-stealer as the girl band’s lead singer, Sugar, and Edward Juvier is kooky and endearing as the jubilant hotel owner, Osgood, who falls hard for Daphne. In the film, Osgood was played by comedian Joe E. Brown as a slow-witted eccentric. But the musical’s Osgood can see the butterfly ready to take wing inside the disguised Jerry.

The touring production looks lush, particularly the costumes, and the dance company is excellent. The score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman is ear-pleasing and clever, but many of Sugar and Sweet Sue’s songs sound alike.

One disappointment in Wednesday’s show was the muddy sound mix, particularly at the beginning of the show. The orchestra occasionally overpowered the dialogue and singing, especially that by deep-voiced actor Tarra Conner Jones, who plays the band’s ebullient leader Sweet Sue.