I think some of the grey heads in the Connaught audience were being scratched at the start of Some Like it Hotter when a bewildered man in an anorak clutching a woman’s make-up box wandered onto the stage with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Had he just made a wrong turn on the way to the loos?
But no, this was Red Hot Charlie (Patrick Bridgman) and he, like us, was entering the Some Like it Hotter Memorial Experience.“Sorry pal, you’ve kicked the bucket,” cackled Jack Lemmon happily, and off we went.
Turns out that when you cark it, you go to a place between life and wherever you’re destined to end up. This is commonly known as purgatory, but not in this play. Here it’s a party: you get to experience once again the time of your life when you were at your happiest and for Charlie it was watching Some Like it Hot when he was 10 and sitting on the sofa next to dear old mum.
So here he is, in a Chicago speakeasy in 1929 and a shoot-out is about to kick off.
At first, the set up of this gentle comedy musical written by Richard Hurford can appear a little confusing. Does Charlie meet Lemmon, Curtis and Monroe or Jerry, Joe and Sugar or Daphne, Josephine and Sugar? But when you grasp that it’s the Hollywood actors themselves who are stuck in this stairwell to heaven, having to play their most famous creations until, well, they don’t know when, it becomes a little clearer.
And when Charlie first sets eyes upon Marilyn you know that a love story of sorts is going to be involved: one, in fact, that turns out to be rather sweet and poignant and not at all what you’d expect. And boy does Sarah Applewood look like Marilyn.
Set in a crumbling theatre with a broken-down stage, not-so-grand piano, and a sparkling mirror ball, Charlie relives his film fantasy scene by famous scene, while the banter is about life, death, love, fame and his mum. Along the way we get some cracking 1920’s tunes – Sweet Georgia Brown, Yes Sir, That’s My Baby – with the whole cast of six (the main actors plus two on stage stagehands) swinging along on various instruments. The voices are not so hot – more like tepid – but adequate to carry off the task at hand and arthritic toes were tapping and old bodies swaying.
Sometimes Some Like it Hotter moves a little slowly, but it’s never less than charming as Monroe keeps in character for every minute of the 2 hours running time. I was watching her closely from the front row (as you do) and her face never once dropped out of Monroe-mode, not once, and it’s a very difficult mode to keep up, with the face being mobile at all times. No wonder Charlie loved watching her all those years ago. Ah, but there’s that twist again. They have a secret. “Me and Charlie go way back,” breathes Marilyn again and again. But in what way, we wonder.
Daniel Lloyd as Lemmon has that larger than life sense of fun although he doesn’t resemble him at all. He’s got that Daphne chuckle down to a tee though. Paul Matania’s Curtis is more of a look-a-like (although he looks far more like Daniel Radcliffe if anyone ever thought to make him into a stick of rock) and sound-a-like. The Radcliffe look is more pronounced when he appears in the natty naval look as Junior, the Cary Grant of the Riviera.
As laydees, the pair excel, with Matania playing Jerry playing Daphne looking like he/she’s just stepped out of an Aubrey Beardsley drawing, whereas Lloyd as Joe as as Josephine just looks like Terry Scott in a dress. Charlie soon joins them (“I want to catch the train to Florida and dress up in women’s clothes”) in a tasseled flapper dress that barely covers his arse and which made the audience reach for their sunglasses at the sight of his lilywhite legs. He’s having the best fun this side of the doors to heaven.
Apart from versions of the film’s famous scenes, nothing much happens but chat and songs, but the characters come across poignantly and you wish them the ‘happy endings’ they so ardently desire. There’s some very silly humour – apparently Daphne was 25 before she even heard the word ‘pelvis’ and even then she thought it was a wild animal – and a nice bit of irony when they make a long legal speech about how the play has nothing at all to do with the film of the same name.
The twist in the plot isn’t exactly a shocker, but it’s satisfying enough, and fear not: we do, of course, get the funniest last line in film history, plus a couple of songs as encores for good measure.
The night before I went to see Some Like It Hotter, I’d been to the press night of Dirty Dancing in the West End. Guess which one I liked more. Yes, sometimes those little old plays in those little old local theatres that no one but oldies think of going to, have more heart and soul than half a dozen West End shows put together.
WHAT: Some Like It Hotter
WHERE: Connaught Theatre, Worthing
WHEN: Tough luck, you’ve missed it unless it comes round on tour again
WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yes, only I wouldn’t take my mother who’d never seen the film and was a little more bewildered than she usually is
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