‘Some Like It Hot’ at the Pantages: dressing like a woman isn’t a joke

The premise of Billy Wilder’s critically acclaimed 1959 comedy, “Some Like It Hot,” starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, is almost as famous as its stars. Two jazz musicians witness a mob hit and disguise themselves as women in order to escape town as members of an all-female band.

Hilarity ensues as the men fall in love with the band’s lead singer (Monroe) while struggling to maintain their feminine wiles. The film faced and overcame threats of censorship when it became a major hit despite pushing boundaries around how gender and sexuality could be portrayed in mainstream cinema. Still, the men-in-ladies-clothing bit was a gag — riotous and ribald.

Updating that aspect of the story for the 21st century, without beating audiences over the head with a message, became crucial to the creative team behind the 2022 musical, including book writers Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman, and lyricist Scott Wittman.

Their innovation was making Lemmon’s character — a stand-up bass player named Jerry who disguises himself as a woman named Daphne — realize that he identifies more as female, and decides to remain so.

The line that received the biggest round of applause during the L.A. premiere of the show at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre on Wednesday came toward the end when Daphne’s partner and best friend, Joe (disguised as Josephine), asks what he should call his pal going forward: Jerry or Daphne.

“Either is fine as long as you do it with love and respect,” Daphne replies.

Cue tears and cheers — no matter what city the show is playing in, said Wittman in a phone interview.

“They’ll say that in places like Nebraska and Idaho and that’s where the biggest roar has been,” he said.

The moment feels good to crowds, in part, because it comes so honestly to the performer portraying Daphne. North Carolina native Tavis Kordell, 23, is a nonbinary actor who came into the fullness of their identity about three years ago. Their transformation from Jerry to Daphne onstage is tender, visceral and — by the show’s conclusion — total.

“I feel like 8-year-old Tavis would be screaming right now, just to see the story that we’re able to tell, a story that I never thought that I’d be able to tell, and to tell it so freely and so openly by taking it across the country,” Kordell said during an interview at the Pantages. “I’m so glad that whether they’re the loudest audiences or the quietest audiences, that this show is being received — that they’re seeing it.”

“I feel like 8-year-old Tavis would be screaming right now, just to see the story that we’re able to tell,” Tavis Kordell says.

(Annie Noelker / For The Times)

Shaiman and Wittman said Daphne’s trajectory is in honor of friends they had in the 1970s and ‘80s when they hung around with Andy Warhol’s flamboyant crowd in New York, at venues like Max’s Kansas City. The men mention transgender icon Holly Woodlawn, as well as Jackie Curtis, who was once quoted as saying, “I’m not a boy, not a girl. I am not gay, I am not straight, I am not a drag queen, I am not a transvestite, I am Jackie.”

Shaiman, 65, said his generation didn’t have the same words as Kordell’s does to describe the many-splendored thing that is gender identity — or rather, what it means to simply exist in a body without gender boundaries.

“They just were them,” said Shaiman. “They were just who they were, bravely leading lives where every day they had to deal with a certain amount of questioning.”

If the experiences of transgender people flew very much under the radar 50 years ago, they are front and center in today’s culture wars — with the Trump administration trying to reduce hard-won gains in civil rights and societal acceptance. Trans people have been pushed out of the military and told that their preferred pronouns would not be used on their passports. Healthcare for transgender youth has also been curtailed, with whole programs being shuttered, including the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

“Some Like It Hot” is the second show to open at the Pantages after “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the Tony Award-winning play based on the bestselling book series by J.K. Rowling — a vocal critic of transgender people.

Art, with its inherent power to engender empathy in audiences, is a powerful vehicle for change in this complex and often heartbreaking moment in history for the LGBTQ+ community, said Kordell and Shaiman.

Seeing the kindness in people’s responses to the show, including in the many letters both the writer and performer have received, has been particularly affecting.

“As Anne Frank said, ‘There’s good in everyone,’” said Shaiman. “And so that’s the silver lining — seeing how sweet and how good people want to be.”

Kordell said they regularly get messages on Instagram about, “how this show has inspired them, how they’ve been keeping up with my journey, how they’ve recently come into their own identities and how this has helped them to come out.”

These stories are particularly special to Kordell who only recently came out to their parents. Kordell, who was raised in a Christian family with a conservative mindset, chose to approach each parent individually — mother first.

“I was crying. I was a mess,” Kordell said. “And she was like, ‘You can stop crying. I already know.’”

Kordell smiles, recalling the rest.

“Do you have anything else you want to tell me?” their mother asked.

“No, ma’am,” Kordell said.

“Now go be free,” their mother said.

Kordell’s father was also accepting — although a bit more reticent. He called Kordell a few days later and said, “You’re my child. I love you no matter what.”

Tavis Kordell recently came out as nonbinary and is thrilled to bring their experience to the stage in the role of Daphne.

(Annie Noelker / For The Times)

When Kordell performed the show for their parents for the first time in Charlotte, N.C., they were again a wreck. It felt like a second coming out. They cried during their transformational number, “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With a Feather,” in which they joyfully sing as Daphne, “Yes, I have tried to love many ladies back when I sang in a much lower key, now you could knock me over with a feather, ‘cause Joe, the lady that I’m lovin’ is me.”

After the show, Kodell’s father gave them the biggest hug and said, “I’m so proud of you.”

“This macho man has so much love for me,” said Kordell, their eyes filled with warmth. “And he literally supports me — just so much. In our hometown, any opportunity he has to talk about me, to his co-workers, to his church family and stuff like that — he’s like, ‘This is my son.’”

And that’s the whole point of the subtle, yet profound, shift in the show, said Kordell and Shaiman. By simply allowing Daphne to be herself onstage, audiences around the country will hopefully see how authentic — and how easy to love — she truly is.