[NEohioPAL] Review of "9 to 5" at Porthouse Theatre

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Porthouse Theatre’s ‘9 to 5’ undermines as it entertains



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics



It is easy to understand why the 1980 film “9 to 5” was so popular.  



Featuring three corporate female employees who were tired of hitting their heads on the low-hanging glass ceiling, the comedy tapped frustrations still felt by women in the years following the fledgling modern feminist movement.  It offered the fantasy solution of a hostile takeover of the company’s “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” boss by way of female ingenuity and new-found sisterhood.  



It also starred actors Lily Tomlin as Violet, Dolly Parton as Doralee and Jane Fonda as Judy.



It is disconcerting that the film was turned into a blatantly formulaic, eager-to-please Broadway musical in 2009, with a bloated book by Patricia Resnick and pop songs by Dolly Parton that generate an abundance of gimmicky and often lumbering production numbers.  



Worse, the same year that the Broadway stage depicted undervalued office manager Violet losing promotions to underqualified men, curvaceous southern-fried secretary Doralee being helplessly ogled and groped by CEO Franklin Hart, Jr., and the newly divorced secretary, Judy, searching for self-confidence, Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, five women won Nobel prizes for medicine, literature, economics and chemistry, and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan found American servicewomen leading raids, manning tank gunners and engaging the enemy on the front line. 



If the movie felt like an artifact of the 1970s, “9 to 5: The Musical” comes across as an incidental self-parody – a work so woefully out of touch with its time that it must be making fun of the 1970s or itself.  But it isn’t.  



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/. 
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