christian-borle-appreciation

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Some Like It Hot

I originally sent this to @whizzvins, who asked for my thoughts on Some Like It Hot, but I figured this would be interesting to others, so here goes!

First off, Some Like It Hot a great show. The script is killer and hilarious and the production is so, so well done. It was absolutely delightful and I think I was constantly smiling for a full two days after I saw it. My face was so sore, honestly.

I know there’s a lot of skepticism about the “man in a dress” trope being adapted for Broadway, but Some Like It Hot is actually the most heartfelt, sincere, and beautiful exploration of discovering another part of yourself, and the power of how clothes can make you feel – about yourself, and about the world and your place in it. J. Harrison Ghee, who plays Jerry/Daphne, is nonbinary and was involved in the development of not only that character, but the show as a whole, so they really injected their experience into it and it’s done so beautifully. There are two gorgeous numbers about growing into your skin and learning how to be free. It’s really moving, and there were a lot of teary eyes in the theatre.

Some Like It Hot a big band musical - full of big tap numbers and indulgent musical sequences. The costumes are gorgeous, the set is dynamic, and it really captures the nostalgia, extravagance, style, and fun of the golden age musicals while also being very relevant to the modern age.

Now – specifically about Christian Borle… he can DANCE!! And act while doing these big tap numbers, which is so hard to do. AND do most of it in heels! The respect I have for that man just keeps growing. He was brilliant, as usual. He’s so good at toeing the line between comedy and sincerity, and it balances out beautifully in this show especially. Joe/Josephine’s character arc is so well done, and Christian has the perfect sensitivity to do it justice.

Joe is obsessed with sex (and he plays saxophone, so one of the “Freudian slips” he has is telling Sugar he’s really good at sex and then correcting to “sax, sax, I play sax,” which is a great laugh), and views his and Jerry’s disguises only as a tool to keep them safe until they escape to Mexico, so he doesn’t quite understand that Daphne really loves wearing dresses and heels and grows to feel very much like both Daphne AND Jerry, and how that feeling shifts from day to day. Joe’s character arc ends with him becoming less obsessed with sex after listening to Sugar talk about all the men who have used her and abandoned her, and correcting himself when he refers to Daphne as Jerry, and being very protective of Daphne and her identity at the end. Both Joe/Josephine and Jerry/Daphne’s character arcs are so nuanced. It’s really refreshing.

A comedic through line that kept cropping up were jokes about how old Joe/Josephine is. I wonder if those lines were added in once they cast Christian, since he is significantly older than anyone else in the cast. It’s a great laugh, and comes back at the best times.

The rest of the cast is phenomenal and they all have fantastic chemistry together. I’m so, so impressed by them all.

Oh, also – Christian sweats a lot. I mean… A LOT. There’s a reason he said his mobster name would be “Sweaty”!

#my favorite man

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I think this image/screenshot embodies the Whizzvin dynamic quite well

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I’m kind of obsessed with the title track of “Some Like It Hot” even though CBorle only sings like one line in it. It’s so joyful and jazzy and catchy, and the video is so sweet. All the voices sound beautiful!

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a wild borle in the background !

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borle via jana’s story !

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christian borle, ladies and gentlefolk.

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hello tumblr borle stans. we are all yelling abt slih over here. i will he sharing more photos.

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Christian Borle is going to be in Some Like it Hot on Broadway this fall!

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whizz outfit things idk. sorry for liking falsettos in 2022 as if it’s my fault

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SO My observations about Little Shop! First of all, let me just say that Christian Borle is an absolute champ. He puts 100% into all his characters (and in Little Shop, he has many in quick succession) and each new one is just as exciting and fresh and interesting and nuanced as the last. If I remember correctly, he plays eight characters (a drunk, a customer, an old man, Orin, Bernstein, Mrs. Luce, Skip Snip, and Patrick Martin—roughly in that order, and I'm NOT counting the narrator because that's likely pre-recorded), and he's absolutely brilliant as each one. I'll just list everything I noticed (mostly about Christian Borle) and hope I haven't forgotten anything!

When he's playing the drunk, he holds the bottle in his arms and cradles it, rocks it, and kisses it like a baby. He plays a very convincing stumbling drunk (he's very shaky on his feet and his depth perception is really off—it takes him three tries to climb one step).

He shows off his ass so much—he just sticks it out constantly when he's playing Orin, whether that's twerking at the audience, or sitting on his knees with his back arched, or crawling across the floor on his hands and knees (which he does a lot). The black jeans he wears are a little tighter than the Marvin jeans, for reference, and it's very obvious.

When he first appears onstage in his Orin outfit, he keeps inhaling nitrous oxide, and he has an inhaler and keeps using it. When he does, he sucks it in, making a Darth Vader breathing noise, bugs his eyes out, and cackles hysterically for a second. He just won't stop doing it, and it's so funny.

At the end of "Dentist!" when Orin says, "Say ah," the urchins all put in those freaking cheek retractors (aka the ones that the Falsettos family wore at Susan Blackwell's Thanksgiving dinner), and did their "ah"s with them in. And then right at the end, they distract the audience enough for Christian to put one in, and he yells "Now SPIT" with that in his mouth. It was absolutely hysterical.

He and Jeremy Jordan have some homoerotic tension going on throughout the show—Seymour almost kisses Orin when he comes into the flower shop for the first time, and the customer Christian was playing earlier in the show was obviously gay and was eyeing Seymour up and down, which... Seymour was noticing and preening. They certainly didn't have to play it this way, but it was absolutely brilliant and fueled my fanfic-loving brain.

On Orin's first visit to the flower shop, after Audrey is cowering away from him, he turns on Seymour and holds his fist up, as if he's going to hit him, and Seymour just SCREAMS, which is hilarious, but THEN— Christian and Jeremy spend a couple minutes just messing around. Christian would lower his arm and Jeremy's scream would subside, but then he'd raise it again and the scream would get louder again. It was basically just dragged out for laughs and it was great.

On a more serious note, none of the abuse is played for laughs. There's absolutely nothing funny about how Orin and Audrey interact. Christian's voice just turns absolutely deadly and ice-cold when he's talking to her and it's so effective and not funny in the slightest. He pretty much whispers, "Excuse me, what?" and "Sorry, what?" when she has interrupted him, and it's actually terrifying. And there's basically a "Marvin Hits Trina" moment where Orin slaps Audrey in the face when she forgets her sweater, and it looks absolutely awful, which was the intention.

As the old man hunched over and pushing a cart, he tries to break into the flower shop when it's closed and gets run off, and it's just something that happens in the background, but it's a great detail.

When Seymour comes into the dentist's office and pulls out the gun, Orin walks forward and straight into the gun (Christian just plays his gait with this swagger that I can't describe, but it's great). The gun essentially folds his nose in half, pressing it sideways, and he just eyes the audience and says his next line (a very sickly sweet: "Are you nervous about seeing a dentist?"). I love that he made fun of his own nose.

Christian seems to have way too much fun brandishing that rusty drill.

When he's got the gas mask on (first of all, that mask is WILD and magnifies and distorts his face ghoulishly), and he's dying, he lies on the floor and gurgles for so long, again just dragging that out for laughs. He JUST KEPT GURGLING. Right when you'd think he was done and had died, he'd do a little spasm and another round of over-exaggerated gurgling would start.

He was crawling all over the floor during that song, leaning into the audience and yell-singing at them through the mask, and I really wish I could have afforded front row tickets! (Also, side note, Jeremy Jordan spits so much when he's singing that I'm pretty positive the front row got sprayed a couple times.)

When he's in drag playing Mrs. Luce during act two, he looks so much like Herbert from Spamalot with a blondish wig on. It was such a callback to that role, especially since he was doing a high-pitched voice and slightly British accent. Oh, and a strange thing I noticed—his legs are so pale! Like it looks like he's never gotten sun on his legs his entire life. They're an almost creepy white color.

Another note about Mrs. Luce—that man can run in fucking stiletto heels! I'm absolutely in awe. He does his bit as Mrs. Luce, then literally bolts off-stage for his quick change into Skip Snip. And he's wearing heels the entire time. Incredible.

Each character he plays in that song (Bernstein, Mrs. Luce, and Skip Snip), all lift up Seymour's glasses to see his face, and do their own variation of a horrified "Ew, no!"

Mrs. Luce throws up a handful of money when she leaves, a lot of which lands in the audience, and the urchins, who are gathering it up, snap their fingers at the audience to pick it up for them and snatch it out of their hands, brandishing their fingers at them for taking it from them. So funny!

At the end of the show, all the characters who were eaten by the plant (so... all of them except the urchins) emerged wearing ghillie suits with a flower around their faces and flowers for hands (which looked kinda like the Stranger Things monsters). They wore these for curtain call, and Christian kinda looked surprised when they brought the lights back up for curtain call. I saw him say "Perfect!" to Tammy Blanchard, who was standing next to him.

For curtain call, they brought out the entire backstage crew for the audience to applaud, then wheeled out a little table with a 12-inch TV on it, exactly what Audrey dreamed of, that had a live video of the conductor (under the stage) to applaud him as well. Then, after the actors and crew left, they left the table onstage, and after the final note was played, the conductor held up a little sign that said “The End,” and the video feed ended. It was so cute. So if any of y'all have the chance to see this show, don't rush out of the theatre after the actors have left the stage! There's this little gem in there at the end.

So— I'm pretty sure that's everything! (I took notes at intermission so I wouldn't forget some of the smaller details.) The cast was brilliant, and I had such an incredible time. I'm so thankful I got to see it.

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For those of you looking for the "I'm gonna fuck you over camera two" interview online, I found the entire section of the interview that covers Falsettos, including that part:

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I think it’s common knowledge that in the Falsettos proshot, in the Thrill of First Love interlude, you can hear Christian say something to Andrew and they both laugh. What I DON’T think is common knowledge is that what he was saying was “I’m gonna f*ck you over camera 2”.

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New LSOH production photos.

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the Head Tilt marvin does at whizzer ( act 1 vs act 2 )

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ex-ex-lovers.