Tootsie the Musical: A Bit Outdated, Don’t You Think?

 I recently watched the musical Tootsie in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, California.  The musical, created in 2018, is currently on its national tour.  I knew about the 1982 film starring Dustin Hoffman as the lead role of Dorothy, and was looking forward to seeing something fun, exciting and fresh.  I was instead greeted with bland songs, outdated jokes and a particularly annoying high pitched fake female voice used throughout almost the entirety of the musical. 

The original story of Tootsie centered around an actor with an attitude problem trying to get a gig in New York City, Michael Dorsey.  Wanting a role, he auditions for a soap opera as a woman and gets the part.   He then becomes a national sensation for his feisty feminist ways as Dorothy Michaels (his… drag name?), falls for his co-star who then starts to question her sexuality only to find out that the person she’s been crushing on is actual just… a desperate man in a dress.  How tragic. 

The original plot of the film is certainly complicated but it seemed to be a hit.  Maybe it was the underlying feminist message that was strong and righteous for the time, or maybe it was Dustin Hoffman’s massive breasts.  The musical’s plot doesn’t differ much, except Michael is instead a struggling musical theatre actor and lands his role as Dorothy Michaels in the terrible musical Juliet’s Curse (which sounds like the worse version of the recent musical hit &Juliet).  

A lot of the jokes and overall vibe felt stuck in 1982, which is odd considering that the musical is set in modern day New York City.  The feminist undertones felt like a cheat- as if every feminist speech Dorothy made was written by a man (which it was!).  And considering that the musical wants to be progressive and “for women,” the female characters are poorly written and fade into the background.  Julie, the leading lady and Dorothy’s costar in Juliet’s Curse, is mostly used as a typical love interest.  There’s nothing necessarily strong or unique about her character.  Dorothy makes a speech at the end of the show discussing how she was treated as a woman, and yet we never hear about the actual struggles of the real women in the show.  

It felt camp in all the wrong ways.  The songs from the actual musical and the songs from Juliet’s Curse so often bleed together that it’s hard to tell the difference between what’s supposed to be good and what’s supposed to be bad.  Michael first enters the stage as Dorothy in a frumpy blue dress… hardly anything to cheer for.  But the main problem I have with this show lies with this question: why? There seems to be no explanation as to why Michael chooses to dress as a woman other than the fact that he was a failing actor.  There’s no build up or development of Dorothy as a character before she’s conceived.  A man just shows up in a dress and boldly faces the challenges of women, or at least attempts to.  The faults in this musical don’t reside in the production (except maybe that horrible fake female voice), but rather, it resides in the story.  

A plot that should be filled with discussions about gender expression and identity, sexuality and the female experience instead makes a mockery out of all of those things, culminating together as a show for people that find the tired old trope of a man in a dress funny.

And, for the sake of having a fun time, get a drag queen in this show.