REVIEW: Taking The Rom Com Hit To Stage, PRETTY WOMAN THE MUSICAL Remains Faithful To The Movie

Thursday 4th December 2025, 7pm, Theatre Royal Sydney

PRETTY WOMAN THE MUSICAL brings Gerry Marshall (Director) and J.F. Lawton’s (screenwriter) unexpected hit romantic comedy to the musical theatre stage.  Together Marshall and Lawton wrote the book for the musical, ensuring that the famous scenes and phrases remain while Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance have created new music and lyrics for the work with mixed results.

PRETTY WOMAN THE MUSICAL premiered in Chicago in 2018 and has enjoyed Broadway and West End engagements along with North American and UK tours, finally embarking on an Australian tour.  The work stays true to the original in terms of the pairing of Hollywood Boulevard Working Girl Vivian Ward (Samantha Jade) and New York “corporate raider” Edward Lewis (Ben Hall) after she shows him how to drive his fancy borrowed car and he does a deal to hire her for the week.  While Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman, the inspiration of the title of the movie, is the only musical piece that remains, the creators have acknowledged the power of this piece of music and the connection audiences have with it and the movie with a cheeky reference at the start of Act II.  With Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance’s original score that draws more heavily on traditional musical theatre stylings than the expected jukebox musical, Marshall and Lawton have managed to weave in more musical theatre song and dance numbers which also provide more of a backstory for the other characters as this story really is about the two central characters.  For the stage version, Happy Man, the mystery man spruiking hope on the tough streets of LA, and Barnard Thompson, the manager at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel, are overtly doubled by Tim Omaji lending the characters an extra depth.  While the movie’s “Barney” Thompson is Vivian’s guardian angel of sorts, showing her how to fit in with etiquette lessons, the stage version does away with the “My Fair Lady” routine in favour of dance lessons with the Manager having a new backstory of being a champion ballroom dancer with a soft spot for bellhop Giulio (Jordan Tomljenovic).  Vivian’s Best Friend and fellow Street Walker Kit De Luca is also given a different character arc to enable a bigger feature in Never Give Up On A Dream and a more significant ‘redemption’. 

With a more traditional musical theatre staging, David Rockwell, scenic designer, has resisted the temptation of projected images to take the place of set pieces that so many other modern musicals have engaged helps set the tone for this work.  It isn’t a jukebox and it isn’t trying to be a movie on stage in terms of the broader cinematography but rather pulling out the key scenes and recreating them while adapting scenes that reference the wider society and situation. Hollywood Boulevard is represented by Neon lights and a single shop stoop while the Rodeo Drive story of snobby assistants is a smaller set piece that is tracked on an off, reinforcing the significance of the shop that is really just there for “That” punchline.  Tom Rogers costume design draws heavily from the costumes made famous by Julia Roberts’ on screen performance with some slight variations but enough of a reference to the original throughout. 

For the die-hard fans of the movie, PRETTY WOMAN THE MUSICAL delivers the famous scenes and lines though with time hopefully the performers will settle into the characters so the movement and the dialogue will feel more intuitive.  The music, while fitting the musical theatre formula, doesn’t quite hit hard enough to override the connection to Roy Orbison and the doubling of Happy Man and Mr Thompson does push Omaji’s voice to a place where he lacks his usual power as Happy Man is wonderfully bold and Mr Thompson feels like its just on the edge of his range. 

While not holding any groundbreaking new message as it stays true to its source material, PRETTY WOMAN THE MUSICAL does reinforce the women’s choice to do what she wants and be who she wants.  While 1990’s society had it as more unusual that someone like Edward would stand up to the vile characters like Edward’s lecherous lawyer Philip Stuckey (Douglas Hansell), the 21st century still has issues of obnoxious men disrespecting women and this work does reinforce Vivian’s right to choice and also providing a reminder that society shouldn’t judge a person for the job they are doing as they may see it in a different light.  This is a light-hearted RomCom and piece of nostalgia perfect for a girl’s night out. 

Pretty Woman the Musical | Australia

Photos: Daniel Boud

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