Some Like It Hot: Hiding to Find Yourself
Escapism and Representation.
My queer heart needed to return to the Shubert theater last month to take in Daphne’s life-affirming journey in Some Like It Hot for a second time before the show closed. The show takes a modern spin on what could have been another uncomfortable, problematic “man in a dress based on a movie” musical (serving side eye to you, Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire). In the perfect blend of escapism and representation, the show portrays contemporary queer love and transgender experience in a period musical bursting with big dance numbers, toe-tapping tunes, door-slamming farce, and stellar performances. I saw myself onstage and lost myself in the experience at the same time, a rare feat that warranted coming back to see it again.
In the show, our two leads Joe and Jerry witness a double murder and join an all girl jazz band on a cross-country trip posing as Josephine and Daphne to escape being murdered by the mob. Anyone who’s ever seen a musical would expect them both to encounter some obstacles and then fall in love with their respective partners by the end, and they’d be right. But the average theater goer would not expect to witness a queer spin on finding yourself by going into hiding. In a Tony-winning performance, nonbinary performer J. Harrison Ghee’s Daphne comes to realize that she is not “Jerry in a dress.” She is most fully and authentically herself when she puts on that dress. She’s happy to be called Jerry, Daphne, or by any pronoun as long as it is uttered with respect. As Daphne comes out, Joe, in a pitch-perfect performance by Christian Borle, goes into a closet when he gives up his male privilege and poses as a woman. Joe ultimately comes come back out into a world that understands him a little less in the end. Meanwhile, Adriana Hicks as Sugar Kane and NaTasha Yvette Williams as Sweet Sue model strength and resilience in response to inescapable racial and gender discrimination. Sweet Sue is clearly queer-coded as well, spending most of the show as the only woman wearing pants in a sea of skirts and dresses.
Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire end with “just kidding I’m a man - an obviously heterosexual man,” and the audience smiles and goes home. But this show is far more respectful of transgender experience, even if the word “transgender” is never spoken. Daphne gets the happy ending she deserves when she marries her love interest, a feminine Mexican man who loves her because of who she is, not despite it. Her life as a man was the proverbial closet we all know about, and she found herself when she came out and embodied Daphne full-time. Joe leaves his truth as a man and goes into the closet by posing as a woman. From there, he proceeds to make a series of problematic choices in his romantic pursuit of Sugar. He is ultimately held accountable for his deceits, as he humbly asks for forgiveness and attempts to rebuild trust with Sugar and Daphne. The white man does not come out on top, and his redemption lies in the hands of his black love interest and his black transgender friend.
I go to the theater to break free from the stressors of my daily life as a human and a therapist. That often means a total escape into the alternate realities of fluff in shows like Hello Dolly! or Back to the Future. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the nonlinear “big, black, queer ass, American Broadway show” A Strange Loop hit me hard because it represented so many gritty aspects of myself that I had not seen on stage before. There was no escapism there - it was all catharsis as my life stared up at me from the stage of the Lyceum and I cried back. Some Like It Hot strikes a unique balance of being progressive, reflecting my life, and serving up some fantastic classic musical theater escapism at the same time. Like Daphne joining the jazz band, I went into the Shubert to escape my life and instead found some extra pieces of myself I did not know I was missing. While I had to leave the theater and return to my life at the end of the show, I left satisfied in knowing that Daphne would spend the rest of her life living in her truth and never having to escape again. Well, that’s the ending the show allows me to hold onto anyway.
Some Like It Hot closed on Broadway on December 30th, but with an original cast recording available and a national tour launching in 2024, you can still take a listen or catch a performance and find yourself hiding in plain sight like I did.
In the Queer Curtain Call series, I offer insights about how the theater heals my queer heart in hopes that it can heal yours as well.
