Tootsie – Marquis Theatre, New York.

James Moye, Santino Fontana, Lilli Cooper and John Behlmann in Tootsie at the Marquis Theatre, New York. Picture: Matthew Murphy

Tootsie continues at the Marquis Theatre, New York.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

“Being a woman is not a job for a man,” says Michael Dorsey as the new Broadway musical Tootsie moves into its final moments. Nevertheless, Dorsey, as embodied in a high-powered performance by the ultra-talented Santino Fontana, does quite a good job of pretending to be one.

As in the 1982 movie on which the show is based, Michael Dorsey is a self-absorbed, self-destructive actor who can’t get or keep a job. Finally, he transforms himself into a lady named Dorothy Michaels and in this new wise, winning, bewigged, padded and feminist character-actress guise (“Don’t call me Precious, don’t call me Tootsie!”), he becomes an overnight sensation. Or more accurately, Dorothy Michaels does.

Unlike the movie, though, Dorothy doesn’t make her mark by getting a role on a TV soap opera. Rather, Dorothy is cast in a Broadway musical, which she promptly saves from being a disaster. The musical is called Juliet’s Curse; it’s a sequel to Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet is awakened from her sleep of death by Romeo’s brother Craig. And the two fall promptly in love.

Dorothy has been cast as Juliet’s nurse, and she quickly convinces the producer and just about everyone else (except the egotistical director) that the musical should take an unexpected contemporary turn. It’s the nurse that Craig should fall in love with. Yes, a middle-aged woman is still capable of finding amour!

Even the title of the musical is changed from Juliet’s Curse to Juliet’s Nurse. And the buzz begins: Juliet’s Nurse is going to be a smash.

That is, until Michael’s conscience catches up with his deceit, forced by the romantic feelings that have been kindled between him and Julie Nichols, the show’s Juliet (a fresh and terrific Lilli Cooper), further complicated by the unquenchable attraction felt for Dorothy by Max (a very funny John Behlmann), the dim-witted but well-ripped actor playing Craig.

Come opening night, and Michael reveals Dorothy’s true self. The news is shocking; Julie is horrified, Juliet’s Nurse closes down. But at least being Dorothy has pulled Michael out of his egotistical spectrum: Dorothy Michaels has taught Michael Dorsey how to love. And with Tootsie’s final curtain, it looks like Michael will get a chance to prove that to Julie.

Robert Horn’s jokey book for Tootsie doesn’t make all of this terribly credible. But things are enacted, sung and danced in such vivacious style, even when we’re being shown the awfulness of Juliet’s Curse, that you may not mind.

Under Scott Ellis’ sure-footed direction, embellished with Denis Jones’ snappy choreography, the show moves forward with the confidence of an old-school Broadway musical comedy, one that knows it’s going to make at least most of its audience happy. And for extra punch, the dialogue is occasionally peppered with a sprinkling of #MeToo era sensitivities.

The score by David Yazbek, fresh from his last year Tony Award win for his Middle-Eastern-flavoured creations for The Band’s Visit, is back in solid Broadway mode, sometimes mocking it, sometimes celebrating it. He has created appealing ballads, jazzy upbeat arias with which Michael can spell out his ambitions, and lots of smart-lyric patter songs.

Delivered with gusto by the 19-member pit orchestra conducted by Andrea Grody, also playing a keyboard, the score, is truly just about as good as a score can be without slipping into the realm of marvellous.

The show’s general sense of laugh-it-up is fortified by an assemblage of expert comic performances surrounding the romantic spiderweb woven by Michael/Dorothy, Julie and Max. Andy Grotelueschen delivers a buffet of dry observations as Michael’s playwriting roommate and sometimes his table-waiting colleague.

Julie Halston makes fear and desperation a lark as the lead producer of Juliet’s Nurse, while Reg Rogers does the same with unstoppable self-admiration as its director. Michael McGrath, playing Michael’s agent kept in the dark about his client’s gender ploy, goes amusingly from bemusement to white-hot anger.

As Michael’s long-time habit of a girlfriend, Sarah Stiles scores probably the most mightily, handling with frantic aplomb the score’s epic and oft-reprised patter song, ‘What’s Gonna Happen’. It describes in copious detail all the horrible things that can happen to a person in auditions and other situations filled with anxiety, and Stiles makes it a tower of tongue-tripping glee.

Of course, gluing all this together are the multiple talents of Santino Fontana as Michael/Dorothy: song-and-dance man; song-and-dance woman, and inherently likeable guy even as ambition and deception consume him.

Along with all this, David Rockwell’s set design, William Ivey Long’s costumes and Donald Holder’s lighting give us a hefty sampling of both on-stage Broadway gaudiness and the grittier everyday surroundings of the folks who make the magic.

Tootsie’s felicitousness has infected the Tony Award nominators. The show has garnered 11 nominations, including the coveted nod for Best Musical, along with taps for its book, score, direction and choreography. Fontana was cited for leading actor in a musical, while three of his castmates were nominated for featured performances: Grotelueschen; Cooper, and Stiles.

The show was also nominated for Simon Hale’s orchestrations and for its costumes. Dorothy Michaels would be proud; she wears them so well, considering she’s a man.

       Ron Cohen