Music or no music, “9 to 5” has to be presented as a period piece, says Ed McClure, director of the Rogers Little Theater show opening tonight.
For one thing, the 1980 film created iconic characters — Judy Bernly, played by Jane Fonda, a shy homemaker who has to find work when her husband dumps her; Doralee Rhodes, played by Dolly Parton, who might be getting by on something besides her brains; Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), who has the brains but doesn’t get the credit; and their obnoxious boss Franklin Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman), a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.”
“For this to work, you have to accept that Mr. Hart is such a sexist and so bad and nobody flinches at it,” McClure says.
Kathy McClure, who plays Violet, and Chris Roderick as Mr. Hart, both remember those days.
“Violet has worked for 15 years for a promotion that is given to a man because he is a member of ‘the old boys club,’” Kathy McClure says. “She lives for her son and making a better office life for those around her. She puts up with the boss because she has to!”
“It’s amazing to think back 30-some-odd years to the way sexism and racism was so big a part of the workplace,” Roderick says. “Thankfully, we have progressed! But to get back to that mindset of treating women like ‘trash’ has been a challenge.”
“As a modern day, post-feminist revolution 30-year-old woman, it is difficult to imagine a day when a woman my age’s entire world has revolved around a man,” says Liz Wax, who plays Judy. “To be this age and never have worked or been forced to take care of myself is completely foreign to me. The challenge comes in doing Judy justice. I can’t just be Liz playing Judy; I have to know what it is to truly be her. And that is very difficult since I grew up in an entirely different world.”
And then there’s Dolly’s Doralee.
“You can’t stray too far from what people are familiar with, but at the same time you want to make it your own,” Autumn Trout says. “The best approach I decided was to keep in mind that although the character is very much based on her, Doralee is a person all on her own, so when we are taking the journey of ‘9 to 5’ every night it will be Doralee’s shoes that I will be walking in.”
Because this “9 to 5,” which opened on Broadway in 2009, is a musical, she’ll be dancing in them, too. Ed McClure promises a high-energy selection of ’80s-flavored songs, performed by a live orchestra, all of them replete with “Saturday Night Fever” style dance numbers created by choreographer Jenella Young.
The action takes place on a set designed to remind audiences of the “Brady Bunch” house, he adds, so with people going up and down stairs and appearing in various rooms, “it’s kind of like directing a musical ‘Noises Off.’”
Of course, Hart has to be trussed up — “we’re going to fly monkeys next year,” Ed McClure says, “so why wouldn’t we fly him?” — and there’s the finale with Dolly. But audiences have to see that for themselves.