By EVERETT EVANS
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle 

The people behind Some Like It Hot have set out to refine Sugar.

Tony Curtis watches a seamstress at work on the set of the 1959 movie comedy Some Like It Hot. He played a musician in drag on the run from gangsters. He's preparing to play the skirt-chasing millionaire in the stage musical version of the story.

The reason is simple.

Ever since its premiere in 1959, virtually everyone has loved Some Like It Hot, director Billy Wilder's film comedy about two male musicians who don drag and join an all-girl band to escape pursuing mobsters after inadvertently witnessing the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

But only some liked Sugar, the Broadway musical version of the film that bowed in 1972 to mixed reviews and a modest run of 505 performances.

The consensus was that a great movie had been made into a pretty good musical. That came as a disappointment, given the gilt-edged credentials of the show's creators: songs by the Funny Girl team of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, book by Peter Stone (1776), direction and choreography by Gower Champion (Hello, Dolly!).

Flash forward to 2002: The musical now gets a second chance to become the blockbuster that was always intended, courtesy of the revised revival that opens Saturday as Theatre Under The Stars' inaugural production at Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

DETAILS
Previews of Some Like It Hot continue June 6 and 7. The opening is Saturday, with performances at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays, through June 23, in Sarofim Hall, Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby. Tickets are $25-$68. Call 713-558-8887.

Longtime TUTS-goers will not find the musical version of the comedy unfamiliar, since TUTS produced Sugar in 1976 and 1985.

Diane Masters and Jeffrey Spolan are the lead producers (with TUTS as a co-producer) of the new version, which launches a 50-city national tour with its Houston engagement.

The producers' first step was to change the title to match that of the show's source.

Their second move, to firm up the connection with the film, was to sign Tony Curtis, 77, as its top-billed star. In the movie, Curtis was Joe / Josephine, one of the two musicians on the lam, opposite Jack Lemmon's Jerry / Daphne. This time around, Curtis plays the amorous old millionaire, Osgood, a role originated in the film by Joe E. Brown.

At the helm of a massive overhaul designed to bring the show closer to the original film -- while keeping its identity as a musical -- is director-choreographer Dan Siretta.

Siretta's choreography has been seen on Broadway in such productions as Oh, Kay!, Whoopee! and Very Good Eddie, all charming revivals of vintage musicals that originated at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House, where Siretta frequently works.

"I first met with Diane on the project three years ago," Siretta said. "She told me she's always loved the show, both the movie and the stage musical. The rights were available, and she felt the time was right for a road tour. She asked me if I was interested in developing it."

Given the possibilities, Siretta agreed.

"Our goal is to bring the flow of the stage version closer to that of the movie," Siretta said. "There were some good ideas added by the musical -- such as having the gangster Spats do `machine-gun-fire' tap dancing -- which we've expanded upon."

Instead of beginning with the luckless musicians looking for work, the musical now will begin as the film did -- with an action montage depicting a raid on the gangsters' speakeasy.

"If you look at the movie," Siretta said, "you realize the pace, the timing, are very theatrical. My goal has been not to imitate the film visually, but to re-create its pace, the way it moves. Even with the addition of the songs and dances, the stage version is being made tighter and faster."

Librettist Stone, the surviving member of the musical's creative team, has revised his book to make it more like the film. The musical's book already had sections of intact movie dialogue; now, it will have a few more.

"In many ways the Broadway script wasn't all that different from the movie," Siretta said. "But there were some spots where it differed. I wondered why they hadn't developed the threat of the gangsters, brought them back sooner in the second act, which we now do. And why Sugar didn't have a big emotional solo, which she now has. The movie was so brilliant that my approach has been: what we can use from the film, we will use.

"So I'd go back to Peter and say, 'Couldn't we go back to the original screenplay at this point?' There are some lines that, in the movie, are more to the point."

Though a couple of numbers are being dropped or abridged, most of the stage score is intact -- but expanded with songs that Styne and Merrill wrote for the show, but which were not used in the 1972 production. Chief among these is a "new" title song, Some Like It Hot (dropped from the Broadway version when the producers couldn't get rights to the the movie's title), and People in My Life, a ballad originally written for Joe, but here assigned to Sugar, for the same spot where Monroe sang I'm Through With Love in the film.

Siretta sorted through the composer's trunk for Styne tunes from other sources. Though the stage score already gave Osgood two comic songs (November Song and Beautiful Through and Through), the role has been beefed up for Curtis with I Fall in Love Too Easily, a Styne standard with Sammy Cahn lyrics, first sung by Frank Sinatra in the 1945 movie Anchors Away. Other lesser-known Styne tunes, including an early hit called Sunday, are being used as background music in nightclub scenes and as background scoring.

In addition, the show creators are interpolating a song not by Styne at all: Runnin' Wild, one of the three '20s standards that Monroe sang in the movie.

The producers have cast the leads with young talents who have some, but not extensive, Broadway experience: Jodi Carmeli as Sugar, Timothy Gulan as Jerry / Daphne and Arthur Hanket as Joe / Josephine.

It is Curtis' name they are banking on to bring in the customers.

But doesn't that risk throwing the show out of balance?

"There would be no show without Tony," Siretta said. "Without his name attached, I don't know if anyone would want to do it. That's the way the road goes. I've been in the theater a long time, and you work with the cards dealt. I like the project, and this is a way we could make it feasible, a marketable package for the road.

"By the way, when I first heard Tony sing, I found him really interesting. He brings a charm and mischief to the show. He gets the humor in Osgood -- that with all these gorgeous girls around, he falls for Daphne."

Did the producers consider trying for some of Broadway's biggest current stars for the leads -- say, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick as Jerry and Joe, Kristin Chenoweth as Sugar?

"We couldn't have afforded three stars in those roles!" Siretta said. "And anyway, those Broadway stars would not agree to a long road tour. When you get down to it, the real star of the show is the title: Some Like It Hot -- as a musical."