9 to 5 the Musical, review: Bonnie Langford is employee of the month in this feelgood but flimsy musical
How would you set about defining what life was like in 1980? Well, it was the year Pac-Man came out, Moscow hosted the Summer Olympics and the world wanted to find out who shot JR. You couldn’t miss off the list, either, that unlikely end of year movie sensation 9 to 5. Dolly Parton’s revenge comedy about three harassed female office-workers who hold their loathsome male boss hostage, humiliating him and transforming their work-place, arguably marked a significant cultural moment in office and gender politics; a warm-hearted feminist rallying-cry for a pink-collar revolution.
It cost $10m to make, took over $100m at the box office, sent the title-song, that wry, upbeat anthem about the daily grind, to the top of the US charts and propelled ‘the queen of country’ (starring alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin) into the mainstream. “I remember going to a movie theatre on opening weekend in December,” the film’s writer Patricia Resnick recalls in the programme to this stage-musical spin-off. “We saw a small line from the box-office to the end of the block but when we turned the corner, the line actually went on for blocks and blocks!” They had captured the zeitgeist…
And perhaps this colourful, feelgood - but also flimsy and slight - show has done that for Parton and Resnick again. Firstly, owing to the basic need for escapist froth, as alarm-bells ring politically. More saliently, though set firmly in the Eighties, it chimes with the #metoo moment. Yet the evening doesn’t take itself too seriously – it looks back to a time when chauvinistic dinosaurs roamed the corporate land but doesn’t labour the implied point that they’re not yet all extinct.
Originally seen on Broadway in 2009 (where it lasted just six months) it was nipped and tucked to a trimmer affair by director Jeff Calhoun, who first presented his production in the UK on tour in 2012. It will perhaps go down better here given that it as much evokes panto-land as Dollywood, the singer’s famous theme-park. There’s something of the fairy-godmother about Parton as she pops up in pre-recorded video bursts to set the scene at a firm called ‘Consolidated’, introducing us to ‘company veteran’ Violet Newstead, the bright-but-belittled Doralee Rhodes (the Parton role) and newcomer Judy Bernly, picking up the pieces of her life and dropping photocopies galore as she gets her first job after being dumped by her husband Dick.
The villain of the piece, Brian Conley’s enjoyably odious Franklin Hart Jnr, ends up getting suspended on high in bondage gear. Conley submits to the humiliation gamely and in general, if there’s disappointment in the company that they’re hardly singing Sondheim (apart from the title number, there are few memorable songs) they don’t show it.
For power-jacketed professionalism, you can’t fault Caroline Sheen (stepping in for an injured Louise Redknapp to play multi-tasking, lovelorn Violet), Amber Davies (the 2017 Love Island winner) as the gradually empowered Judy and Natalie McQueen as the drawling Doralee, bewailing the bimbo status that she has been saddled with.
‘Employee of the month’ award however should go to Bonnie Langford as the office toady Roz. Her ludicrous devotion to ‘the Man’ reaches its zenith in a madcap dream-sequence number that finds her hanging upside-down off Conley in stockings and a corset. What a trouper! A case of go, y’all? Well, it’s certainly not for everyone, but there are worse ways of spending a few hours after a hard day at the office.
Until August 31. Tickets: 0844 871 7687; 9to5themusical.co.uk
