"In "Working Girl," an upwardly mobile Melanie Griffith embodied Tess McGill, a secretary from Staten Island with big hair and even bigger dreams. She thought her new boss (played by Sigourney Weaver in the 1988 Mike Nichols movie) would be an ally, since they were both women trying to make it in a man's world, but just because Katharine Parker didn't reach up her skirt, the way Tess' male superiors had, didn't mean she wouldn't try to stab her in the back."
"The stars of the Broadway-aspiring stage musical now showing at the La Jolla Playhouse are not Tess and Katherine, but the 1980s themselves: poofy bangs and copious hairspray, nylon stockings and shoulder pads, boomboxes the size of briefcases and synthesizer-driven pop music (supplied here by Cyndi Lauper, whose music and lyrics resemble her Top 40 a lot more than her work on "Kinky Boots")."
"Where that movie - and the Dolly Parton-backed Broadway musical it inspired - were peppy and empowering, serving up an amusingly extreme answer to workplace chauvinism, "Working Girl" feels like it might have made a sharper play, given how plot-driven Kevin Wade's original screenplay was. Catchy enough to warrant radio play, Lauper's songs have the tricky task of sounding simultaneously hip (by contemporary standards) and retro, like a recently unearthed pop album originally recorded back in the '80s, then lost to time."
Tess McGill is a Staten Island secretary with big hair and big dreams whose supposed ally Katharine Parker ultimately betrays her. The stage musical foregrounds 1980s style—poofy bangs, hairspray, shoulder pads, boomboxes—and relies on Cyndi Lauper's synthesizer-driven pop. Lauper's songs echo her Top 40 sensibility more than her work on Kinky Boots and must bridge contemporary and retro sounds. The musical contrasts with 9 to 5's peppy, empowering tone and may underuse Kevin Wade's original, plot-driven screenplay. An opening number features Tess (Joanna "JoJo" Levesque) on the Staten Island Ferry, while modern LED screens create visual anachronism.
Read at Variety
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