Pre-Broadway Review: ‘Tootsie’ the Musical
“Tootsie,” a jaunty new stage musical adaptation of the 1982 movie comedy that starred Dustin Hoffman, has a real degree of currency to it, and it’s not because book writer Robert Horn (“13: The Musical”) and composer David Yazbek (“The Band’s Visit”) have set it in the present. Rather than telling the story — about a male actor who pretends to be a woman to get a gig — as some kind of look-what-women-go-through, pseudo-empowerment feminist lesson, they choose instead a nearly full-on satirical take on the narcissistic male ego. It’s that perspective that lifts the story’s farcical spirit into the contemporary.
Most everything here comes off with a vibrant musical-comedy zeal, from Horn’s fresh and funny one-liners to Yazbek’s brassy-funky-jazzy score to the comic performances led by Santino Fontana (“Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella”).
