‘Sugar’
J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company

As nearly everyone knows, the lead character in the classic Billy Wilder film “Some Like It Hot,” played by Tony Curtis, essentially has three distinct identities: first, he’s Joe, an out-of-work saxophone player in 1929 Chicago who runs afoul of gangsters and disguises himself as a female musician named Josephine to escape Chicago with an all-girl band. Soon enough, he transforms himself again, this time into Junior, a standoffish young millionaire bachelor who speaks suspiciously like a famous movie star whose initials are Cary Grant.

Like Joe/Josephine/Junior, the story most famously known as “Some Like It Hot” has existed in many guises, two of which have been playing at New York’s theater district. In addition to “Some Like it Hot,” the new musical hit playing to full houses at the Shubert Theater, there’s “Sugar,” the 1972 Broadway show that was presented in a small-scale but highly enjoyable production by the J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company.  

Most of us grew up with the 1959 Wilder film — universally acknowledged as one of the greatest American movie comedies ever and perhaps the no. 1 role of the legendary Marilyn Monroe — and many find it surprising to learn that the basic story goes back much further than that. 

It originated as “Fanfare d’amour (Fanfare of Love),” a 1935 French film about two unemployed musicians going in drag to travel with an all-female jazz orchestra. In 1951, the story was remade in Germany as “Fanfaren de Lieben (Fanfares of Love),” which was essentially the same plot updated to contemporary Berlin.

That German version was so popular that it not only inspired a sequel, “Fanfaren der Ehe (Fanfare of Marriage)” (1953), but it attracted the attention of the legendary Austrian-born Hollywood auteur, Billy Wilder.  As Laurence Maslon recounts in his definitive 2009 history, “The Some Like it Hot Companion,” Wilder and his co-writer, I.A.L. Diamond, reshaped the story to add a more threatening crime element. 

Wilder’s masterpiece, with the greatest comedy cast ever — not only Curtis and Monroe but Jack Lemmon and Joe E. Brown — became such a cinematic icon that everyone forgot the previous versions of the story. It also overshadowed an attempt in 1961 to spin off the film into a TV series, starring Vic Damone and Dick Patterson as Joe and Jerry and Tina Louise as the love interest. 

Roughly 10 years after that — when the classic film was still on everyone’s mind — producer David Merrick launched the idea of a Broadway version. Then, in 2022, the new adaptation was launched. As Broadway historian and producer Brian Drutman has observed, it would make more sense for the 1972 show to be titled “Some Like It Hot,” as it’s much more of a literal adaptation of the Wilder film. 

The current show that really is titled “Some Like It Hot” goes off in its own direction, with a terrific score, great dancing, and boffo comedy, especially from Christian Borle as Joe. Along the way, the 2022 “Some Like It Hot” also makes serious statements about gender and racial identity amid all the high-energy fun and frivolity.  

“Sugar” was never a critical fave but ran for more than a year. This was enough at that time to be considered a success, though it hasn’t been seen in New York ever since. The J2 Spotlight production of “Sugar” reminds us that this is a worthy effort, with terrific songs — even lesser-known Jule Styne is better than almost anyone else — that retain the full flavor of the Wilder film.  

Robert W. Schneider’s direction made good use of a triple-threat ensemble of young female musicians who quadrupled as pit band, minor characters, singers, and dancers. Two memorable supporting characters add considerably to the antics: Robert Rowan as Osgood, a demonically ditzy aging playboy, and Oren Korenblum as Spats Palazzo, a diminutive mob boss who, alongside his two oversized henchmen, expresses every sentiment in nonstop tap dancing.

This must be a unique time in the annals of the American musical theater: There are rather few examples of an iconic work being adapted into two completely different musicals, and even fewer instances when both of those musicals are playing at the same time a few blocks from each other.

It’s easy to understand why two very different sets of musical creators would be inspired by this story. As Osgood famously says in the last line, “Nobody’s perfect.” In all its many permutations, though, “Some Like it Hot” is as perfect a comedy as has ever been created.