The 1988 hit comedy Working Girl – that neon-tinged, big-hair, bigger-dreams rom-com starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver – has officially traded shoulder pads for spotlights in its World Premiere new musical incarnation at the La Jolla Playhouse – Working Girl: The Musical. With music by 80s legend Cyndi Lauper, who struck Tony gold with Kinky Boots, this world-premiere adaptation arrives with a pedigree and a powerhouse creative team. And while Lauper once again delivers a string of wildly catchy tunes that let the three leads soar vocally, the musical as a whole gets tangled in a book that can’t quite decide what story it wants to tell.
Theresa Rebeck, best known for NBC’s Smash, provides a book overloaded with themes and subplots: women’s empowerment, corporate ambition, class struggle, romantic entanglements, best-friend fallouts, workplace harassment… It’s all in the mix, but either stretched too thin or hammered too hard. The bones of the beloved film are intact, yet strangely, the alchemy that made the movie sparkle feels just out of reach here.
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Our heroine is Tess McGill, played by pop-star Joanna “JoJo” Levesque, a natural comedic presence with a voice that could level skyscrapers. Tess is an “I don’t take anyone’s crap” secretary from the Bronx armed with a business degree and a burning desire to rise above lecherous bosses and mindless busywork. When she’s assigned to whip-smart, high-powered executive Katharine Parker (Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer), Tess thinks she’s finally caught a break until Katharine steals one of her ideas and passes it off as her own. Classic Katharine.
When Katharine is conveniently out of town, Tess steps in and teams up with handsome businessman Jack Trainer (Anoop Desai) to push her idea into reality. Along for the ride is Cyn (Ashley Blanchet), Tess’s ride-or-die friend who manages to keep at least one foot planted firmly on the ground while Tess chases the corporate dream. Romance sparks, loyalties strain, Katharine eventually returns to the wreck shop, and the whole thing plays out as an 80s rom-com workplace blender with its big-hearted message still beating at the center.
But where the film balanced its romance, its comedy, and its girl-boss energy, the musical doesn’t quite juggle its priorities. The romance between Tess and Jack is almost an afterthought, and with the focus trained so steadfastly on empowerment (a worthy theme, of course), the story loses some of its fizz. Jack is written so flatly that even though Desai wisely sidesteps any attempt to mimic Harrison Ford, the character has almost no identifiable traits until he suddenly confesses he loves to dance. This revelation launches a fun Morris Day and the Time-style number that absolutely shows off Desai’s vocal and dance chops, but thematically? Character-wise? It’s a dead end. And as talented and handsome as he is, Desai reads too young for the romantic triangle with JoJo and Katharine, making the pairing feel a bit mismatched.
Meanwhile, Tess’s Long Island boyfriend Mick (Joey Taranto) – a role originally played by Alec Baldwin – is now a local rock star, a change that provides him with a couple of unnecessary musical numbers and little narrative purpose. His and Tess’s interactions are so brief that there’s no real emotional punch when their relationship dissolves. The same problem plagues the Tess/Jack pairing: the stakes simply aren’t there.
Let’s talk music. Lauper’s score is infectious, propulsive, and often exhilarating. But with 18 songs and two reprises, the show is bursting at the seams. Not every moment needs to be sung, especially when a number is repeating the same message we’ve already heard two or three times. Tess alone has multiple anthems about working hard, striving for more, and refusing to be stepped on – timeless themes, sure, but we don’t need them hammered into us with this many musical exclamation points. The creators clearly love these songs (understandably!), but this is a case where killing a few darlings would make the show stronger. Trim it down to about 12 numbers, give the characters room to breathe, and deepen the relationships we’d be cooking with gas.
As directed by Christopher Ashley (“Come From Away”), there are some clever scene changes, but it also seems a bit expected and nothing that a summer stock company couldn’t pull off. Occasionally, actors roam the stage, unsure what to do while their counterparts are performing. While it all works for the most part, there should be a wow factor for it to justify a Broadway ticket price. This can easily be managed with a little more work.
Now, credit where it is due: the cast is sensational. JoJo Levesque is the real deal. She’s magnetic, funny, and her voice is a powerhouse weapon that could front a Broadway show eight times a week without breaking a sweat. She genuinely makes Tess her own, and you can feel the audience falling for her from the first note. Anoop Desai is equally impressive as a singer with a jaw-dropping vocal instrument and dance moves to match; he just needs a book that gives him something meatier to play. Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, always a reliable comedic assassin, nails Katharine with a delicious wink and a belt that brings the house down. And Ashley Blanchet’s Cyn provides much-needed emotional grounding; she’s warm, charming, and the kind of best-friend character an audience instinctively roots for.
In the end, Working Girl: The Musical absolutely has the ingredients to be a Broadway contender. The cast is top-tier, Lauper’s score sparkles, and the core story remains an audience-pleasing gem. But in its current form, the show feels like exactly what it is: a work in progress. With a substantial book overhaul, tighter focus, and a leaner, stronger musical score, Tess McGill might just climb her way to the top of the theatrical corporate ladder.
But for now? This Working Girl hasn’t quite cracked the glass ceiling. Yet.
“Working Girl: The Musical” runs through Dec 14th at the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, CA.
For info and tickets, visit lajollaplayhouse.org.
