The musical's name, spotlighting the lead female character, resulted from producer David Merrick being unable to license the film title. A revised Sugar with additional songs would tour nationally between 2002 and 2003 as Some Like It Hot: The Musical, boosted by the casting of film star Tony Curtis as elderly millionaire Osgood.[1]
Synopsis
Two unemployed musicians, bass player Jerry and saxophone player Joe, witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago. In order to escape gangster Spats Palazzo and his henchmen, they dress as women and join Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopaters, an all-female band about to leave town for an engagement at a Miami Beach hotel.
Complications arise when Joe, now known as Josephine, falls in love with beautiful band singer Sugar Kane, who has a slight drinking problem that tends to interfere with her ability to choose a romantic partner wisely. More than anything, Sugar wants to marry a millionaire, prompting Joe to disguise himself as the man of her dreams.
Meanwhile, wealthy and elderly Osgood Fielding Jr. is pursuing Daphne, unaware she really is Jerry in drag. As much as he knows he needs to reveal his true gender to his over-amorous paramour, Jerry is beginning to enjoy all the expensive gifts bestowed upon him on a regular basis.
Total chaos erupts when Spats and his gang descend upon the hotel and realize who Josephine and Daphne really are.
A west coast tour followed in the fall of 1974, with performances in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ritchard was to have performed the part of Osgood, but he fell ill shortly before the opening and was replaced by Gale Gordon.[2]
"When You Meet a Man in Chicago" - Sweet Sue and All Girl Band
"Penniless Bums" - Jerry, Joe and Unemployed Musicians
"Tear the Town Apart" - Spats's Gang
"The Beauty That Drives Men Mad" - Jerry and Joe
"We Could Be Close" - Jerry and Sugar Kane
"Sun on My Face" - Jerry, Joe, Sugar Kane, Sweet Sue, Bienstock and Ensemble
"November Song" - Millionaires and Osgood Fielding Jr.
"Sugar - Jerry and Joe
Act II
"Hey, Why Not!" - Sugar Kane and Ensemble
"Beautiful Through and Through" - Osgood Fielding Jr. and Jerry
"What Do You Give to a Man Who's Had Everything?" - Joe and Sugar Kane
"Magic Nights" - Jerry
"It's Always Love" - Joe
"When You Meet a Man in Chicago" - Jerry, Joe, Sugar Kane, Sweet Sue, All Girl Band and Chorus Line
A final song, "People in My Life" (Sugar), was taken out during the previews, but has appeared in some later productions.
The 1992 West End production released a cast recording. [7]
Productions
In 1974 the Casa Mañana Theatre in Dallas staged a production of Sugar starring Scott Jarvis as Jerry/Daphne, Joey Evans as Joe/"Josephine", and Persis Forster as Sugar Kane.[8] Jarvis had worked as Robert Morse's standby during the Broadway run, and had played the part on occasion during its New York run.[9]
In 1986 a successful production was staged at the Teatro Lola Membrives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Susana Giménez as Sugar Kane, Arturo Puig as Joe/Josephine and Ricardo Darín as Jerry/Daphne was the stars of this version accompanied by Norma Pons and Ambar La Fox, with Gogó Andreu as Osgood Fielding Jr. The director of this production, which closed three years later in 1988, was Mario Morgan.[11]
In 1990, a production of “Sugar” was staged at the theatre Pozorište na Terazijama in Belgrade, then Yugoslavia (modern day Serbia), under the title Some like it hot (Neki to vole vruće). The show was directed by Soja Jovanović, with Svetislav Goncić as Jerry/Daphne, Rade Marjanović as Joe/Josephine, and Ivana Mihić In the titular role of Sugar. The production was a smashing success, and went on to become the longest running production in the history of theatre in Serbia, continuously running for over 30 years, and is still running to this day. Over the years, almost all of the original cast members have left the show, except for the two principals in the roles of Jerry and Joe, who were the ones most responsible for the enduring success of the production. In 2022, Marjanović stepped down from the part of Joe and took over the part of Bienstok, with Žarko Stepanov taking on the part of Joe.[12]
The West End production, starring Tommy Steele, opened at the Prince Edward Theatre on March 19, 1992 and closed on June 20, 1992. The production reverted to the film's title of Some Like It Hot.[13]
A 2002-03 United States national tour starred Tony Curtis as Osgood Fielding Jr. in a revised production, titled Some Like It Hot: The Musical.[14][15][16] Curtis had played Joe in the original film. This national tour wardrobe is on display at the Costume World Broadway Collection in Pompano Beach, Florida.
A new production of the show ran at the Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford, New York April 2010 through July 2010.[17]
In February/March 2011 Pimlico Opera presented a new production in Great Britain at Send Prison in Surrey. The cast included professional actors and inmates.[18]
A Danish production of the show ran in 2011 at Folketeateret in Copenhagen under the title "Ingen er Fuldkommen" ("Nobody's Perfect"). The show opened in October and starred Danish musical actress Maria Lucia.[20]
42nd Street Moon presented Sugar as part of its 19th Season, April 4–22, 2012.[21]
In 2016 started a new production of the musical in Barcelona, Spain. The whole play was translated into Spanish and Catalan and had been in theaters until April 2018.
In his review of the Broadway production, Time theatre critic T.E. Kalem thought the musical "has been so thoroughly processed, refined and filtered that it has lost the natural energy that makes a good musical strong and healthy." He added, "If hummable songs are a plus, Jule Styne's songs are hummable, though you may not know quite which homogenized number you are humming. As for Bob Merrill's lyrics, they are the labored products of a man hovering over a rhyming dictionary. Sugar is almost a textbook case of a musical born after its time. It may well enjoy great wads of audience favor. But in the past three years, Company and Follies have altered the critical perspective by providing a musical form that is spare, intelligent, ironic, mature and capable of sustaining three-dimensional characters." He concluded, "This is not to say that the big, old-fashioned musical is irrevocably doomed, but it must have a singular mood, manner and meaning all its own. Otherwise, all that remains, as Sugar indicates, is a sterile display of high-gloss techniques."[22]
Dyan McBride, director of a 2012 San Francisco production of the musical, noted in an interview that "Written in 1972, Sugar really has one of the last Golden Age of Broadway scores.... You can feel contemporary Broadway starting to come.... This is not a rock 'n' roll score; this is really a jazzy score. But you can start to hear things changing; there's a little bit of lounge, and you can hear some Bob Goulet."[23]
^Joyce Haber, "Stardom for Morse — as a Leading Lady", Los Angeles Times August 25, 1974, p. 27; Dan Sullivan, "'Sugar': Take It With a Grain of Salt", Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1974, p. I1.
