9 To 5 The Musical continues at the Savoy Theatre until 31 August 2019.
Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩
It cannot escape one’s notice that the musical adaptation of 9 To 5 is a Dolly Parton production. Not only is her name above the title (deservedly so, for a songwriter of her standing and reputation) but she also crops up on video inserts. A lot.
Indeed, the opening number of this show – which makes its debut in the West End, after a 2012 UK tour and a 2017 Fringe production – sees pre-recorded inserts of Parton info-dumping character profiles of each of the major characters, as the ensemble dance and sing to the ridiculously catchy title track.
Quite why the audience should need Ms Parton to assume such a role is a mystery. Perhaps it is a lack of confidence on the part of the producers, or by director Jeff Calhoun: certainly, Patricia Resnick’s book alone does a more than ample job of explaining the principal characters’ roles.
Whatever the reason, the opening number is weighed down by the distracting videos. On the other hand, distraction may be what is needed from Lisa Stevens’ superfluously exuberant choreography. This is a show set in the 1980s, to be sure, but there is little reason why staging a show nearly 40 years later should fall prey to that decade’s worst excesses so early on.
The central story should be strong enough to withstand such shocks. A trio of women, all fed up with the inequities of working for a sexist man, end up kidnapping him and, in his absence, transform the working environment into one that is both more equitable and more productive.
Of the three central women, Carolin Sheen (stepping in at short notice after Louise Redknapp had to withdraw due to injury) acts as the central core, her Violet Newstead acting as a big sister to Amber Davies’ bewildered ingenue Judy.
However, despite Parton’s ear for a good tune, neither Sheen nor Davies are really ever afforded anything approaching a meaty musical role. That honour falls to Natalie McQueen, who as Doralee adopts the role given to Parton in the film. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that it is this character who emerges not only as the best singer (and with the best songs) but as the most well-rounded.
With such rich material, McQueen is clearly in her element, and promptly delivers the performance of the evening – although West End stalwart Bonnie Langford does her best to steal the show as Roz, the assistant who is in love with the sexist monster who employs them all.
And it is that relationship which starts to show how 9 to 5’s politics, despite everything good the show has to say about the benefits of equality for all, begin to unravel.
It would be impossible for Brian Conley to play Franklin Hart without a twinkle in his eye, and a musical so outwardly light and frothy can clearly not turn his character into the sort of Harvey Weinstein-level monster that recent real world events may recall. In the light of #MeToo, and an increasing awareness of the toxicity of some men’s behaviour towards women in the workplace, a scene where Hart connives situations to look up his secretary Doralee’s skirt without her noticing seems particularly tone deaf.
The effect is that, while the women of the piece start to come out on top well before Act I has even ended, it feels like Calhoun’s directorial sympathies are not 100% with them.
Considering that in 1961, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was already telling male employees that ‘A Secretary is Not a Toy’, it feels as if 9 To 5 could have moved the conversation on further than it has.
Instead, all it ensures is that David Mamet’s forthcoming Weinstein play Bitter Wheat may end up being only the second most tone-deaf piece about workplace harassment this year.
Scott Matthewman
Tickets for 9 to 5 The Musical are available HERE
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