Caroline, or Change follows the internal struggles faced by 39-year-old mother of four Caroline Thibodeaux as she clings to her core values and ways of life in the slowly changing world of Louisiana in 1963. Noah, the son of Caroline’s employer, is told by his new stepmother that Caroline will be allowed to keep any money he leaves in his pant pockets when they go to wash. Noah sees this as an opportunity to help his family’s impoverished maid, whom he idolizes, by leaving his allowance in his pockets for her. The necessity of “change” – here meaning both small amounts of money, which could help her family, and the social progress of the civil rights movement  – forces Caroline into a crisis. The show is entirely in song, with jazzy recitative occasionally interrupted by a powerful Motown- or klezmer-inspired solo.

Neema Bickersteth, Arlene Duncan (Photographer: Joanna Akyol)

Arlene Duncan, starring as the eponymous maid, brings a powerful combination of subtle sadness and vocal intensity to her performance, leaving the audience at times breathless and others in laughter at the balance of brutal honesty and clever wit in the libretto. Londa Larmon, Sterling Jarvis, Neema Bickersteth, Alana Hibbert and Jewlle Blackman, as the washing machine, dryer, moon, and radio surpass and overpower the score which, though often toe-tapping and enjoyable, leaves the audience with not one memorable tune.

The child actors, Michael Levinson as Noah and Kaya Joubert Johnson and Derrick Roberts as Caroline’s younger children, are sometimes difficult to hear over the band but otherwise remarkable as actors, singers, and dancers. Levinson especially shines with his strong voice, clear diction, and convincing depiction of a boy reacting to a complex and changing world.

Michael Levinson, Sabryn Rock, Derrick Roberts, Arlene Duncan, Kaya Joubert Johnson (Photographer: Joanna Akyol)

The set, by Michael Gianfrancesco, is beautiful and intricate and the choreography, by Tim French, is lively and entertaining. The costumes by Alex Amini are convincing and, in the case of the washing machine, dryer, and moon, thoughtful and beautiful.

As musicals go, Caroline, or Change has among the most meaningful of libretti. The metaphors are rich and the themes thought-provoking and socially relevant, making the fast-paced music and plot occasionally aggravating. The rhymes are at some moments sharp and clever, but others weak and distracting: “damp” with “swamp” and “quarter” with “starter”.

Though its songs may never enter the Broadway canon, and you’ll never hear them on American Idol, they are powerful and serve the plot and characters well. The performers were all outstanding and demonstrate the spectacular direction of Robert McQueen, and the show is well-worth seeing by any fan of Broadway, jazz, klezmer, or theatrical genius.

Note: Wednesday Matinées are only $18 for students.

Caroline, or Change

directed by Robert McQueen music direction by Reza Jacobs
choreographed by Tim French

featuring Arlene Duncan, Neema Bickersteth, Jewelle Blackman, Deborah Hay, Alana Hibbert,
Sterling Jarvis, Kaya Joubert Johnson, Londa Larmond, Michael Levinson, Cameron MacDuffee,
Mary Pitt, Nicholas Rice, Derrick Roberts, Sabryn Rock, Shawn Wright

set design Michael Gianfrancesco lighting design Kimberly Purtell
costume design Alex Amini sound design Peter McBoyle

stage manager Erin Fitzgerald apprentice stage manager Paul Beauchamp
production manager Matthew Byrne assistant director Aadin Church assistant musical director Beau Dixon

With a great variety of sweet treats to eat and a tour of beautiful Kensington Market, Tasty Tours demonstrates another great example of what makes our city so awesome and quirky. Tasty Tours is truly one of a kind. Using Kensington Market as the focal point of the tour is brilliant. It has a multi-ethnic selection of foods and is such a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

Tasty Tours was founded and is led by U of T graduate Audrey Ooi: a smart, charismatic, and fun young woman. Her strong entrepreneurial spirit/hard work is what makes her company such a success after only taking off in the summer of 2011. Her tours are engaging and you can definitely learn a thing or two, like the history of candy corn and what makes it special (trust me it’s actually quite interesting, let Audrey tell you). The tour has an informal and relaxed feel. It’s well paced and not rushed. You get to actually experience the city, walk around among the locals, and go into places you probably would never have thought to venture into.  Fortunately for all of us,  Audrey also has plans to further expand her tours to other parts of the city!

This October, I was fortunate to have taken part in a special Halloween Tour. Normally, tours are held either Sundays at 11 am and alternate Fridays at 5 pm. Tours start at Butterfly Bakery right in Chinatown and then we gradually make our way in Kensington Market, which is really close by. On the Halloween Tour we got to try (in no particular order) special “Pan de Muerto” (Bread of the Dead) at Pancho’s Bakery, cute (yes cute) cupcakes at Miss Cora’s Kitchen, home-made truffles at Chocolate Addict, and some organic marshmallows and yummy Jelly Bellys at Blue Banana. My goodness it was awesome.

Christmas is coming up soon so I’d be sure to catch the Christmas Tour special this year! For more information, sign up for the mailing list to receive emails on exclusive giveaways and specials on the website here. You can also find more information on the Facebook page here.

Photo Credit goes to Audrey Ooi

Days later, my friends and I received emails informing us of the volunteer time and location: 7pm to 11pm at the Coach House. The Coach House? Where in the world is that? We wondered the same thing. It’s a small structure in the middle of a parking lot behind the Faculty of Law building, across from Queen’s Park. We had received word to meet at Hart House beforehand to figure out what we were supposed to. After scarfing down sandwiches from Timmy’s and racing across campus, we eventually found ourselves in a room filled with high school children covered in gold glitter and wearing aprons. It turns out these were some kids from Parkdale who were volunteering at the artisan farmer’s market in the courtyard. They were supposed to encourage people to eat crickets (which were being cooked and served there), seeing as crickets are the food of the future… according to the exhibit. I’m not quite sure where the glitter came into play but, when it comes to Nuit Blanche, I’ve learned not to ask.

Eventually we were directed to the right people, given volunteer tags, and sent on our way to the Coach House. The exhibit we were volunteering at was called ‘All That is Solid Melts into Air’ by Mark Boulos. Here is the description from the Nuit Blanche website:

Two films projected on opposing walls feature intensely conflicting, yet inextricably intertwined forces: one shows frenzied stock traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange speculating on the futures of oil; the other shows guerrilla fighters in the Niger Delta preparing for battle against oil companies that extract and export oil from their land.

It was actually quite an interesting piece that seemed to invoke mixed emotional reactions from the audience.

Basically, our job was to make sure there weren’t too many people in the film room at one time, answer questions, and keep track of how many people came in and out. After the first 20 minutes or so, we noticed that the few people who were coming through seemed to have a hard time finding the place; they tended to walk down an alley and hop a fence just to get to the door. That’s when we realized that someone should be out there, guiding people in. The building is sort of hidden and the map in the Nuit Blanche booklet was not particularly helpful.

We started taking shifts, with someone staying inside the toasty-warm and brightly-lit room while two others directed people through the bushes and around a building to the Coach House. Despite the chilly weather, it was a fun four hours. Standing outside, we were able to watch some intense people watch the films while, at the same time, we could talk to friends, fellow students and/or family members that showed up over the hours. At slower times, we kept ourselves entertained by partaking in a slightly altered version of Sheldon Cooper’s ‘Soft Kitty; and texting people to come see the exhibit. At one point, while resting inside, we had a lovely conversation with an Italian woman about the beauty of her mother tongue and about her daughter, who is a professor of Rehabilitation Sciences here at U of T.

Overall, the volunteer experience was fun.  The time went by pretty quickly and there were still hours left afterward to go and enjoy the rest of what the city had to offer. Unfortunately, we never managed to visit the Parkdale kids and eat some crickets. But, then again, there’s always next year.

She has all the forward thinking-ness of the Terrence Donnelley Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (the glass tower attached to MedSci) but without the near childish use of colour. Where Donnelley slaps you in the face with a curved red wall and random blocks of colour throughout its glass facade, Pharmacy gently implies monochrome maturity and refinement. Save for the suburban style front lawn, the Pharmacy Building proclaims to the public that it is U of T territory. We should be glad that our southeastern sentinel is so beautiful.

The Donnely Building on the left has a near childish use of colour. Pharmacy to the right is more mature.

To be fair, Pharmaceutical Studies students pay hefty tuition and no small reason for that is to pay off the debt for such a magnificent structure. Although glib, the tower instills a sense of professional pride in pharmacy far more than its former home, the current Anthropology building - a 60’s stone block hidden away from public view.

The former Pharmacy Building, hidden away from the public hardly instills a sense of professional pride (no offense Anthro

The building elevates the professional image of Pharmacy and may be playing a part in the huge increase of applicants in recent years. One can argue that Pharmacy is an exceedingly economic pursuit, as there’s big money to be made in selling colourful pills to treat what ails us. The building reflects this: the Apotex student atrium and lecture halls, the WalMart Canada professional practice lab, the Rexall PharmaPlus Conference Room, the Pfizer tenth floor custodian’s closet, and the GlaxoSmithKline men’s basement urinal.

Professionals in the practice of blabbing about urban design love mentioning how the Pharmacy Building has a ‘relationship’ with the Ontario Power Generation Building south of College and the Tanz Neuroscience Building just to the north. Pharmacy uses a similar architectural style to Ontario Power, a reflective glass block atop mighty concrete support columns, while Pharmacy’s exposed concrete supports are the same height as Tanz, showing much appreciated respect to the antique nature of Tanz. After all, science depends on the countless hours of work done by those who came before.

The Pharmacy Building forms a seamless urban fabric by using a similar style to the Ontario Power Generation Building to the south. It shows RESPECT to the Tanz Building to the North by way of its exposed concrete columns.

The building’s interior is just as rewarding as its exterior. The same mature ambiance permeates every facet of its construction: cool coloured floor tiles, black leather chairs, simple geometric tables, and exposed concrete walls. The donut-style superstructure of the tower allows sunlight to shower down from the ceiling, reaching the first floor and the anemic lab rats performing research.

Scenes from Pharmacy: Top Left: Entering the Apotex Student Study Zone. Top Right: A mature public space to share notes and lunch. Bottom Left: Looking down on the Study Zone and trying not to break out in a cold sweat of height-inducing fear. Bottom Right: Sweet Joy! Even the banal utility corridors have sunlight!

However, I, along with many other Pharmacy Building users have one complaint: the elevators are slow! It shouldn’t take ten seconds for the doors to open and close. There’s a reason why we’re in them - it’s supposed to be faster than taking the stairs. At least there’s an excellent view of who paid for much of its construction:

A U of T Rotaract member helping out at the Rotary Children's Christmas Party

Of course, there are many other clubs that are like us. Like those clubs, our goal is to provide a service to the community, both locally and internationally. What sets us apart is the support we get from the Rotary International family and our parents’ club, the Rotary Club of Toronto. Because of that, our club has internationally-supported opportunities such as international projects and conferences. There is also a commitment to help us development professionally as young adults. We organize events that allow members to network with professionals in their respective fields. Most of all, we aim to increase our knowledge and understanding of issues that are important in our community and provide a way for members to address the needs they have shown.

Members at a Rotary Children's Christmas Party

This year, Rotaract @ U of T has amazing some events and opportunities planned, including collaborative projects with organizations aimed to tackle homelessness, a Hart House lunch, a major event aimed to support Rotary’s efforts in ending polio, and various socials where you get to meet Rotarians and like-minded people in the GTA. In the past, we have participated in the Princess Margaret Run for the Cure, UNICEF Trick-Or-Treat Halloween Fundraising with the TTC, and Toronto Rotary’s annual Christmas parties for seniors and disabled children.

New members are always welcome to join us. The meeting commitment is twice a month – once every two weeks. Of course, if you want to be more than a regular member, we have a special opportunity this year. We are looking for members of the U of T community who would like to commit to being a executive member of our club. The deadline is September 5, 2011. The positions that are available include:

• Secretary
• Treasurer
• Community Service Director
• International Service Director
• Communications Director
• Youth Day Liaison
• Hart House 5-Buck Lunch Coordinator

If you have any questions about membership, meetings, or general inquiries about Rotaract and Rotary, visit our website or email us at rotaract@utoronto.ca.

Be a part of one of the largest service clubs in the world. Be part of the Rotary Family.

Post written by Wilson.

As global collaborations play an increasingly more prominent role in student culture, a student group based at the University of Toronto has been encouraging teamwork among graduate students across the country. Health Science Inquiry (HSI) is a Canada-wide student-run journal that was established in 2009 at U of T, and now has membership from over 10 Canadian universities. What sets this journal apart isn’t just its expansive Canadian membership (and being the only Canada-wide graduate student publication to date), but its ability to provide students with a platform to express their thoughts through commentary-based writing.

To date, the group has published two issues of its journal (June 2010, June 2011) and has developed partnerships with internationally recognized journals. Rather than publishing research-based articles, HSI publishes commentaries on a specific theme each year. In 2010, the H1N1 pandemic was selected as the topic of interest and 13 submissions were selected for publication. The journal also introduced a competition aspect by partnering with The Lancet Infectious Diseases, which ended up publishing one of the submissions as a Reflection and Reaction piece in an August 2010 issue of the journal.

The theme in 2011 was cancer, and a similar partnership was established with the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which has selected an HSI submission for publication in the upcoming fall journal. In addition, the 2011 issue was expanded to include an Artistic Images section, a News section and Dialogue Pieces.

This is certainly an exciting time for the journal, as it continues to grow and attract participation (from both students and faculty) at a national level. HSI is currently recruiting members for its 2011-2012 team, and an application package with full details on how to apply can found on the group’s website. If you’re a graduate student who’s interested in getting involved with a Canada-wide student publication, a peak at the application package is definitely encouraged. Available positions range from editorial-based positions to roles in layout and design.

Ted Dykstra directs two plays for the Soulpepper Theatre company this summer: the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, and the one-act, one man show, The Kreutzer Sonata. The first has a great cast and very solid direction, while the second is reasonably well acted by Dykstra but is terribly directed.

The Glass Menagerie is the story of the Wingfield family in the South, struggling to make ends meet after being abandoned by the patriarch: the father to Tom and Laura, husband to Amanda. The children are grown now and so the role of breadwinner falls to Tom, who feels shackled by his family responsibilities, stuck in a low-paying job he hates, wanting desperately to escape, to have adventures, and to write. Laura is a shy cripple, who spends her days wandering the city and caring for her glass menagerie – a collection of small glass animal figurines – rather than learning a trade so that she can support herself. All of this worries their mother, Amanda, who lives in constant fear that Tom will abandon them just like his father, and that, left to fend for herself, Laura will fail, and remain always hopelessly dependent on others. The characters all speak in a Southern drawl, flawless enough that it helps give the language the right sound adding to the performances.

Dysktra’s rendition of The Glass Menagerie is done with a surprising amount of levity for a Tennessee Williams play, which is not to say it lacks Williams’s trademark bleakness. Amanda (Nancy Palk) is the real star of the play, delivering her nostalgic dialogue and complaints in a light and over-the-top fashion which is incontrovertibly funny. Palk often talks about the gentleman callers of her youth with such vanity that the tone is humourous rather than full of loss. And it works.

In the beginning of the play, Tom speaks to the audience to explain that “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic.’” And yet Dykstra’s production feels very immediate. The dialogue flows impeccably to the point that I remained so utterly engaged that I would forget that this was a memory play, Tom’s memory. The only reminder that the events were supposed to be memories was the fact that the actor playing Tom, Stuart Hughes, is too old to be the Tom in the unfolding action. Part of the realism comes from the fantastic set which gives us both the interior and exterior of the apartment the family inhabits. The interior is especially good and the characters move comfortably in it, which kept me completely convinced that this was a real home. But the fact that the play feels so realistic – despite its being a memory play – is hardly something I can complain about in the production, though I worry that some of the nuance of the text may be lost because of it.

What most impressed me about the production was how radically and masterfully the tone and pacing changed through the three parts of the play. It begins with despair and little hope. The characters talk slowly and keep their distance from each other in the physical space; the action moves slowly, too. As soon as a gentleman caller for Laura becomes a real possibility – Tom asks a friend from work to dinner – the characters light up, the energy on-stage increases, the lines delivered more quickly and excitedly, and the physical distance between these unhappy characters decreases. The pacing of the action and the hopefulness in the tone wonderfully tells us just what an important symbol of hope the gentleman caller really is. And when everything blows up as it must – this is a Tennessee Williams play – the tension and the bleakness of the situation seem audible and can be physically felt: everything slows down and becomes pregnant with pauses.

While Dykstra’s direction was a triumph in The Glass Menagerie, it is a trainwreck in his one-act show, The Kreutzer Sonata. The Kreutzer Sonata is a play adapted from the short story of the same name by Leo Tolstoy, which, itself, is inspired by the Beethoven duet for piano and violin, the “Kreutzer Sonata”. It tells the story of a husband who becomes consumed with jealousy and rage when his wife plays Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata” with another man that he murders her. The wife and other man play with whom she plays Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata”. Ted Dykstra plays the enraged husband, who tells us the story of the events leading up to and including the murder of his wife, of which he is ultimately acquitted, since it was provoked, supposedly, by adultery.

It’s a one-hour show during which Dykstra sits in a red armchair, sipping a glass of water throughout the entire performance. Dykstra is convincing as the husband and successfully takes us on his journey of emotional turmoil, engaging throughout. The trouble with the play is that it lacks context. In fact, it’s staged in such a way that he looks just like the host of Masterpiece Theatre. To whom is he talking to? Is this a monologue to himself, as he works through his issues? It can’t be since he seems to be talking to someone? Does he think he is in front of an audience, addressing us directly, like Richard III would do? Is he confiding in a friend from the comfort of his armchair at home? This seems unlikely given the frequency of private intimate moments that he experiences throughout the telling. The reason why he is telling his story and to whom are completely unclear, which means the production ultimately fails. And the fact that it’s full of misogyny – an insane and enraged husband gets away with murder because he is right to think that women should be assumed adulterous and evil and deserve to be beaten and die for it – only fuels my distaste for the play.

Where: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts (at Osgoode Subway)
When: Tuesday-Saturday (26-30) at 7:30PM
Tickets: $35 if you’re under 30 and join <30 DanCap; $40-65 regular admission.
More information: See the Next to Normal website

The best show in town this week, and possibly even this summer, is the 2009 Tony award-winning musical, Next to Normal, playing at the Four Seasons Centre, the last stop on its North American tour. Next to Normal tells the story of Diana Goodman (played by Alice Ripley in a Tony award-winning performance), a woman with bipolar disorder, and her family as they struggle to cope with the strains from her condition. Diana’s husband, Dan (Asa Somers), sticks with her, trying his best to help her cope with her condition, still clinging to the image of the woman he first met in his early twenties but that may no longer exist, deluding himself that everything is fine. Their daughter, Natalie (Emma Hunton), is a straight-A straight-edged student, who eventually hits breaking point, after starting up a sweet and optimistic romance with her supportive stoner classmate.

Wednesday’s concert featured a mix of great standards and original compositions both old and new. The highlights included a wonderful rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek” and Marsalis’s “Eternal”, the title track of his record. Marsalis and Calderzzo are incredibly in tune with one another. Marsalis is, no doubt, the resident master. He seems to effortlessly and intuitively produce fantastic musical solos while Calderazzo works to keep up with his part, much of which is scripted in music he is reading; Marsalis didn’t have any music on stage.

This is not to say that Calderazzo didn’t hold his own; he played quite a lot and very well and many of his compositions were a joy to hear. Perhaps Calderazzo said it best: he doesn’t know how Branford Marsalis does it, but if he hears something once, he has it committed to memory. The one thing he doesn’t know, as Calderazzo pointed out, is the key that any song is in, though he can play them perfectly in any key. Marsalis explained that, as a child, he and his brother would ask their dad to play a song for them. Branford would ask his dad what key the piece was in, before they started, and his father Ellis would respond, ‘son, there are no keys. There are only notes.’’ Eventually Branford stopped asking and just learned to figure it out as they went along.  

Marsalis and Calderazzo performed at the Toronto Jazz festival in 2009 as part of Marsalis’s quartet, on the mainstage at Nathan Phillips Square (reviewed here), but what a departure this show is from that. To begin with, the change of venue to Koerner Hall meant a change from terrible acoustics to fantastic ones where the music can really really shine. Marsalis and Calderazzo make an excellent duo; I’ve been waiting in anticipation for their new album since Jazz Lives in 2010. When playing together, they build on each other’s strengths, harmonizing sometimes and just responding and developing at other times. This is not a duo that feels like they are missing a bass player; they have really made the most of the two instruments, collaborating on solos rather than merely taking turns.

Marsalis and Calderazzo played two encores in response to two very deserving standing ovations. The concert, which, in the end, ran about two hours with no intermission, still felt way too short; I would have been delighted to keep reveling in their talent and performances for at least another hour.

Earlier in the week, I saw The Bad Plus perform at the Enwave theatre and the experience couldn’t have been more different. I saw Ethan Iverson play with Charlie Haden back in 2009, and he was fantastic. So I walked into The Bad Plus concert with high expectations. And Iverson was good. Too good for the band he was playing in. The Bad Plus consists of Ethan Iverson on piano, Ried Anderson on bass, and David King on drums, and they all sound like they are playing in a different band with a different style. Iverson has the light jazz touch of Bill Evans and he’s very good. David King isn’t your average drummer – he tries to provide a rich percussive texture that’s more than just loud banging – but he sounds like he belongs in a rock band. Rather than being unobtrusive support, King’s drumming often takes over the pieces with rhythms that juxtapose so much with the other two parts that it’s often hard to find anything to focus on. This is the point, I suppose. Reid Anderson’s playing is halfway between rock bass and jazz trio acoustic bass.

The sooner you stop listening for a melody – and riffs off that melody – the easier it is to appreciate the three competing parts going on at all times. But I still found it too busy. The trouble isn’t that there are three different parts going on at once but that they aren’t connected at all. The three musicians sound, essentially, like they are playing three different styles in three different bands. Yet they are listening to one another – they start and stop together in perfect unison at multiple intervals throughout each piece – so this is a stylistic choice. It’s just one that happens not to work. Here’s hoping that the next time Iverson finds himself in town, he’ll be playing a solo concert, or a duo with somebody just as good or better (like, say, Charlie Haden, once again).

Where:

Dancap productions brings 9 to 5: The Musical, with songs and scores by Dolly Parton to the North York Centre for the Arts for a short run from June 29 to July 10. This touring Broadway stage production of the 1980 film, Nine to Five, is a solid production of a mediocre play. The target audience for the show is, no doubt, the same crowd that enjoyed the Jersey Boys production that played in Toronto in 2009. I’ll warn you upfront that I don’t belong to that group; I had free tickets to Jersey Boys and just barely managed to sit through the bad music and the horribly sexist plot. 9 to 5: The Musical is orders of magnitude better, with phenomenal sets, great staging and lighting, good acting and singing and music that’s great – if you like that sort of thing – and still fun if you don’t (and I don’t) though ultimately dated.

9 to 5: The Musical is about three feisty secretaries who turn their fantasy of killing their “sexist, egotistical, lying hypocritical bigot” of a boss (Joseph Mahowald) into an almost-reality: they decide to kidnap him instead and reform the office while holding him hostage in his own house for a month. The women, all quite likeable, are Violet (Dee Hoty), the head secretary with enough business acumen to be running the place, if she weren’t a woman in the 1970s; Doralee (Diana DeGarmo) the voluptuous, blond bombshell, and Texan, whose beauty confuses people into forgetting she might have a brain; and Judy (Mamie Parris), the recently divorced ingénue and newcomer to office politics.

The production is quite dazzling with period costumes and very elaborate sets. The stage changes seamlessly and convincingly between an office with many, many desks, to the office of the head honcho, to several different homes, to a women’s bathroom. It’s very possibly one of the best elaborate sets I’ve seen in recent years, which ensures that the stage is used well and never feels too full or too empty. Even though there may be several set pieces and several actors on stage at a time, the lighting cues are well-designed to focus the action. I just wish there were more dancing.

But the production is all spectacle and no substance. Nine to Five may have championed the feminist movement in the early 1980s, but today it is simply dated. That is not to say that musicals from the 60s or 70s should not be performed today; Hair and Hairspray still resonate today when done as period pieces. But 9 to 5: The Musical is no longer inspirational. In fact, it’s somewhat insulting that it suggests that women can only make their way in the workplace by resorting to underhanded crime; it’s supposed to be funny, but in 2011, it’s cringeworthy. The play is simply out of date. The production isn’t blameless either. Violet is probably the most modern of the women – clever, cynical, charming – but in the song-and-dance number where she is living her dream of being the empowered, career woman, it’s the first time we see her show cleavage. What kind of message is this?

Perhaps the production would seem less dated if it had been put together before the days of Mad Men being a commercial success. But we, as a culture, are already so accustomed to biting, clever commentary on the sexist office politics of the 1960s on Mad Men that it would take a lot to impress us here. 9 to 5 fails to deliver the goods. While Mad Men explores the complexities of pushing towards real culture change in business, 9 to 5 reduces these issues to two-dimensional silliness, which may have worked as empowering escapism in the 1980s, but these days, it just seems petty. Surely there are better fictitious role models out there of women changing the workplace realistically. This plays like Revenge of the Secretaries, and sometimes it’s funny but a lot of the times lines that are supposed to make me laugh, like the intentionally sexist running joke “What do you call a woman who has lost 95% of her intelligence? Divorced.”  just make me cringe and feel uncomfortable.

If a feminist musical is the goal, why not remount My Fair Lady? Compare the inspirational number, “Shine Like the Sun” (“I’m gonna shine like the sun when these clouds roll away from my door. I won’t crawl. I can run. I won’t be at your mercy no more. We’ll be singing it loud/so be proud that we’ve finally won.”) from 9 to 5 ,with the still fantastic and timeless lyrics from “Without You” in My Fair Lady (“Art and music will thrive without you. Somehow Keats will survive without you. And there still will be rain on that plain down in Spain, even that will remain without you. I can do without you.”), which is to say, there are better feminist musicals of the past that are still relevant today.

That being said, if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief, 9 to 5: The Musical is a highly competent production. The cast can sing, act, and entertain, and it’s a very, very polished production.