Review: The Mac-Haydn’s 9 TO 5 Clocks In and Gets Even

The Eoghan Hartley directed production of 9 to 5 at the Mac-Haydn Theatre wastes no time clocking in. Dolly Parton’s title song starts the engine before the audience has fully settled, and the show keeps moving with the bright, busy efficiency of an office where everyone, at last, knows what she is doing. We even get a visit from Parton herself, albeit through a cleverly constructed video device that sets up the show. The video helps us go back to the time before "MeToo", a smart way to overcome the cringy sexism of the period. The production understands the musical’s bargain: speed, sparkle, and indignation. Hartley collects on all of it.

Set in 1979, 9 to 5 follows three women grinding away under Franklin Hart Jr., the vain, predatory boss of Consolidated Industries. Violet Newstead has trained a succession of men who were promoted over her. Doralee Rhodes endures Hart’s advances and the office rumor, false and vicious, that she has encouraged them. Judy Bernly arrives newly single, inexperienced, and still recovering from the shock of being cast off. A shared hatred of Hart draws the three together, first in revenge fantasies, then in a comic mistake that leaves them effectively running the department themselves. The question is not whether they can do the job. The question is how long they can keep Hart from taking it back.

The design team commits to the period with skill and precision. Bethany Marx dresses the secretarial pool in earth tones, sharp collars, and the sort of polyester authority that deserves its own filing cabinet. Alvia Cross gives the office a Carter-era vocabulary of avocado, rust, and boxy furniture. Summer McCormack’s hair design claims vertical space as a form of protest and captures all the styles of the period featuring among others the shag and the mullet. The sexism is not subtle, nor should it be. Hart’s leering is matched by the casual way “girl” functions as a job description, and a contemporary audience is meant to feel the abrasion. Parton and book writer Patricia Resnick make us sit inside the era’s ugliest assumptions just long enough to enjoy watching three women take them apart.

The satisfaction of that dismantling rests on the central trio, and Mac-Haydn, under the skilled Producing Artistic Director, John Saunders has found one worth cheering. Bridget Carrow’s Violet Newstead is dry, watchful, and formidably sane, a woman who has survived the office by learning to read every man in it a half-second before he speaks. Returning after her stunning performance as Miss Adelaide in last season's guys and Dolls, Carrow shows a range that spans the spectrum. Carrow gives Violet's frustration a fine, controlled burn, then lets it flare in “One of the Boys,” which plays less like a fantasy than a hostile corporate takeover with dancing.

Caitlin Wilayto plays Doralee Rhodes, the role Parton originated onscreen, without turning the performance into imitation. Her Doralee has warmth without softness. “Backwoods Barbie,” the score’s loveliest ballad, is sung with enough restraint to let the hurt show through. When Doralee’s patience finally runs out, Wilayto has the steel ready, and her “Cowgirl’s Revenge” earns some of the evening’s loudest laughs.

As Judy Bernly, Tzintli Czerda has the largest arc and makes it pay. She begins almost folded into herself, apologizing before anyone has asked her to, then discovers the pleasure of taking up space. By the time she reaches “Get Out and Stay Out,” the number releases everything the character has spent the evening swallowing. Czerda sings it so the room goes still before it breaks open.

Michael Daly plays Franklin Hart Jr. with the necessary absence of vanity. The role works only when the actor will be both ridiculous and repellent, and Daly protects himself from neither. Kristen Clark is a precision comic weapon as Roz Keith, Hart’s besotted enforcer, turning “Heart to Hart” into a delirious act of misplaced devotion. Hudson Brown brings easy charm and pure vocals to Joe, Logan Pavia, another welcome return from last season, shows his range as Dick and Tinsworthy, and the ensemble, including Delaine Bailey, Jack Gemmell, Grace Mauldin, Aubrey Dunbar, Bella Pavia, Ricky Dobbs, Gaby Flores, Will Forrest, Emmett Mazurowski and Fiona Phelps, keeps Sarah Juliet Shaw’s inventive, commuter choreography crisp and pleasantly caffeinated.

Under Connor Crotzer Scartascini’s music direction, with Ethan Swanson assisting, the band gives Parton’s country-pop score its bounce without burying the singers. I marvel at the Mac-Haydn bands ability to sound so much larger than its five pieces. Andrew Gmoser’s lighting moves smartly between fluorescent office fatigue and the saturated brightness of the women’s revenge fantasies. George LaChance’s sound design keeps the lyrics clean in a score that likes to talk fast. Chloe Weiderhorn’s props add their own small jokes, from the copy machine to the treacherous office chair.

As a plot, 9 to 5 would not survive a deposition. The women more or less abduct their boss, improve productivity in his absence, and avoid legal consequences because the musical has better things to do than explain itself. Fair enough. The show is not built for plausibility. It runs on velocity and nerve and the deep satisfaction of watching an office tyrant get caught inside the system he thought he owned. Hartley keeps that engine running to the last beat, and the audience walks out into the summer heat with Parton’s chorus still permeating.

The Mac-Haydn, founded in 1969, is one of the Hudson Valley’s true treasures, not merely a place to see a show but one where talent is trained and an audience kept alive. In an age when so much entertainment is solitary and streamed, there’s something almost radical about sitting in a room full of strangers, laughing together at a family that finds its joy in gloom.

Special mention goes to Producing Artistic Director John Saunders, who year after year leads a stellar team to a season this polished and this entertaining. All of it deserves to be celebrated and protected, because theatres like this cannot live on applause alone, much as they earn it. So let me be plain: buying a ticket is a fine start, but it is not enough. Buy a subscription. Make a donation.

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9 to 5: The Musical runs through July 5 at the Mac-Haydn Theatre, Chatham, NY. Music and lyrics by Dolly Parton; book by Patricia Resnick; based on the Twentieth Century Fox film. Directed by Eoghan Hartley. Music direction by Connor Crotzer Scartascini, assisted by Ethan Swanson. Choreography by Sarah Juliet Shaw. Scenic design by Alvia Cross; costumes by Bethany Marx; lighting by Andrew Gmoser; sound by George LaChance; props by Chloe Weiderhorn; hair and makeup by Summer McCormack.

And there is plenty more worth subscribing for. Here is the rest of the season:

On the Mainstage

• The Secret Garden, July 9 to 19
• Newsies, July 23 to August 9
• Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, August 13 to 23
• Hairspray, August 27 to September 6

Special Events

• Daddy Long Legs, July 29 and 31
• Showstoppers, September 2 and 4

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