Let no one claim that actor and writer Thomas Lennon shies away from a creative pickle. The man who got the ball rolling for Trading Places: The Musical! said he first concocted the scheme to bring the troublesome 1983 Dan Aykroyd/Eddie Murphy role-swapping movie to life via song and dance because of — not in spite of — the hurdles it presented. Lennon ultimately wrote the book for the show, which is in previews at the Alliance Theatre, where it opens Saturday.
“If I’m being completely honest, I saw it more as a challenge than something that would be fun,” said Lennon, best known for his sharp comedic work in MTV’s ‘90s sketch comedy show The State as well as for playing Lieutenant Dangle on Reno 911!, which he also produced, directed and wrote. “I mean, I’m a working writer. Most of my work will never see the light of day, so I love points for difficulty in trying to adapt something.”
The John Landis-directed flick, based loosely on Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and set in 1983 Philadelphia, follows Aykroyd’s Louis Winthorpe III, a wealthy, obnoxious commodities broker, and Murphy’s Billy Ray Valentine, a poor but resourceful and charming grifter. The owners of the firm where Louis works, the Duke brothers (based on the Koch brothers), make a $1 bet for their sociopathic amusement to see just how the two would fare if their circumstances get swapped. Then they then manipulate events so that the swap happens.
So, suddenly Valentine has a lucrative job, a swanky apartment, and just about anything he could want, while Louis has to survive like, let’s be real, the majority of Americans. It’s a movie still beloved by many as an offbeat Christmas film and for Murphy’s still-hilarious, star-making turn. But the movie hasn’t aged well overall and features some significantly disquieting moments.
“There are three or four humongous areas where we’re like, we either do way better or we can’t do anything,” Lennon said. So, the good news is that the cringe-inducing scene where Dan Aykroyd “disguises” himself by donning blackface, and the vignette where a gorilla rapes a human repeatedly are gone from this adaptation.
“I jokingly always pitch to the actor who plays (character Clarence) Beeks that he’s going to have a song about his ‘love scene’ with a gorilla on the train called, ‘Whoops, I Schtupped a Gorilla,’” Lennon said. “Obviously, that’s not happening.”
What remains at the core of the musical version is the intriguing question of what might happen if you were to walk around in someone else’s shoes. Would it foster greater empathy? Would it result in societal change?
To pull off this feat, the Alliance team boasts a high-profile roster of talent focused on refracting the story through a “2022 lens,” said director Kenny Leon. The Atlanta theater legend came on board nearly three years ago and has helped shape the revamped story in major ways. Those suggestions included some key character alterations: Murphy’s Billy Ray Valentine is now written as a woman, spelling her middle name Rae, played by Aneesa Folds (known for spectacular improvised hip-hop group Freestyle Love Supreme).
Folds hadn’t seen the movie until she was preparing to audition for Billy Rae. Once she viewed it, suffice it to say she noted issues. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is problematic. This movie cannot happen today. Do I want to do this?’” she said.
However, once she saw the project’s team, particularly Leon, and realized the new direction the musical had taken, she was excited. “The idea of systematic racism is very obvious in this piece,” she said of the musical version. “It’s a lot of things being thrown in different people’s faces, but in a fun way. I think people will say, ‘Oh, I laughed a lot, but I learned a lot, too.’ That’s one of the best gifts of theater.”
There’s another element of the movie that can be jarring to watch today: The frequency in which 21-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis was required to take her clothes off for absolutely no reason. As recently as March, Curtis spoke with People about her discomfort during the shoot: “Did I feel embarrassed that I was doing it? Yes. Did I look OK? Yeah . . . Did I like it? No.”
“(The movie) definitely objectifies her,” Lennon said. “And it was an era where that happened a lot. In that period, it was like, ‘Well, we’ve introduced a woman; when is she going to have her clothes off?’ That used to be a thing.” He and the creative team discussed how to make her character “something that’s not as icky.”
Now, Curtis’ “hooker with a heart of gold” character, Ophelia, is written instead as a gay man named Phil Lopez (Michael Longoria) who performs drag at a piano bar. Leon said changes like these broaden the scope of humanity represented in the show, allowing the opportunity to explore a wider variety of perspectives.
“What’s so great about Thomas’ take on it is we start with a lens in the present day, looking at ourselves in the 1980s so we can learn how far or how much we have evolved as people in terms of sexual fluidity, gender differences, racial differences and the way men treat women,” Leon said.
Beyond the problem-scene cuts, Leon and Lennon have focused on forging something fresh for Atlanta audiences — and, if all goes well, potentially Broadway audiences, too.
“Going to a show that people are excited about because it’s accurate — that’s my nightmare,” Lennon said. “I think you could come and see this show, especially with what Kenny’s brought to it, and if you like the film, it will only add to your enjoyment of the show. If you have never seen the film, it will not matter one iota. There are no places where you’re supposed to yell out the lines like in Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Leon is well versed in remounting high-profile revivals with fresh energy, such as A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway with Denzel Washington, for which Leon won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play.
“If I take something from another era, from film, and just plop it down on stage, that would be a disservice,” Leon said. “The play is a perfect vehicle to look at how we are evolving in our country, where we’re falling short politically, where we put so much emphasis on capitalism. In the last four years, what has that done? The gap between the haves and have-nots has grown.”
Leon hasn’t walked the boards at the Alliance in nearly 20 years, so this venture also heralds a homecoming and, he said, a “chance to celebrate Atlanta and the people who raised, taught, helped, and cheered me when I was nobody in this profession.”
Working closely with Leon to continue the show’s evolution over the last two years has been a symbiotic process for Lennon. “I have an inherent silliness, and Kenny has an inherent gravitas,” he said. “And while Kenny is my good friend, we’re both pretty hard on each other. I know he has no problem telling me I can do way better sometimes. If it were up to me, I would change most people’s dialogue almost every day. I basically do until Kenny screams at me to stop.”
The process has been open, collaborative and sometimes even experimental. Fatima Robinson, brought on as choreographer by Leon, has worked with the likes of Aaliyah, Prince, Britney Spears and Kendrick Lamar. She and Leon collaborated on The Wiz: Live for NBC in 2015, so when he asked if she’d like to help get this show moving, she instantly said yes.
“This particular play has so much comedy that drives and dictates what you do,” Robinson said. “You figure out what looks good on the cast and what will make them shine, and everyone has something in them that you can pull out that is their natural flow. I look for that, and when I find it, we enhance it.”
Of course, no musical is ever complete without some actual music. For that, New York songwriting team Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner came in to fill the air with the dulcet sounds of social satire.
To get started, Zachary and Weiner tried to situate the sound of each character and each new number in a particular time and place. They were clear they didn’t want this to be a jukebox production. They combed through the musical, spotting lines that sound like amusing song titles. There are ‘80s power ballads and sitcom themes — a little bit of everything.
“I think Sondheim talked about this, but songs function in a couple of ways, either moving a story forward, where, by the time the song ends, the story is in a different place, or the character’s emotion has been revealed to the audience in some new way. So you’ve learned something about that person,” Weiner said.
Zachary and Weiner never wanted the Duke brothers to seem “cartoonish or arch,” so they gave them an old-fashioned, Vaudevillian-style tune for the song where they’re devising their scheme.
They also threw in some homages to various widely known musicals, such as “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here” from Annie when Billy Rae “is being introduced to this townhouse she now lives in and all these servants, a life like something she’s never known.
“We were like, ‘I mean, this is a big production moment,’” Zachary continued. “It’s like a song happens when someone can’t even speak anymore. It just reaches this new level. And so, there’s lots of opportunity for that.”
Of course, belting it out in the style of women singers of the era like Roberta Flack or Gloria Gaynor has required some vocal marathon running, Folds said. But, if anything, the character has helped her pull it off. “I tell you, Billy Rae does not have imposter syndrome, so getting to be [in this big show at the Alliance] and embodying that confidence is really helpful.”
In the role of Louis, Bryce Pinkham, a Broadway veteran who nabbed a Tony nomination for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, said a favorite moment for him is a satirical nod to Les Misérables. Sung in the style of Fantine’s tragic “I Dreamed a Dream,” Louis describes his feelings about his new existence without the benefit of (gasp) extraordinary wealth.
“I sing a sort of sad lullaby to myself about how it appears I’ve hit rock bottom, and heaven knows how I’ll survive,” Pinkham said. “Then Louis sings about all the privileged things he doesn’t have. To him, that’s the end of his existence. But of course, he’ll be fine. Basically, all he has left is this $6,000 watch, and he’s holding onto it for dear life.”
As the sparkly pink curtain rises on Saturday evening, bringing to fruition years of thinking, writing, and reimagining, Leon said he hopes audiences exit the Alliance still laughing at the comedy but with some deeper ideas brewing.
“I want them to go home and talk and say, ‘What do you feel about this?’ And say, ‘You know what? Maybe we should vote a little differently in the next election.’ Or, ‘Maybe we should talk to that homeless guy out there instead of passing by him.’”
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Alexis Hauk has written and edited for numerous newspapers, alt-weeklies, trade publications and national magazines including Time, the Atlantic, Mental Floss, Uproxx and Washingtonian magazine. Having grown up in Decatur, Alexis returned to Atlanta in 2018 after a decade living in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles. By day, she works in health communications. By night, she enjoys covering the arts and being Batman.
