‘Pretty Woman: The Musical’: Flashy fun but not quite sizzling

The 1990 film Pretty Woman was both a celebration and critique of 1980s materialism. A combination Cinderella/Pygmalion story about a businessman falling for a sex worker, and vice versa, it seemed a throwback, a retrograde paean to a prefeminist romantic dream. But the incandescent chemistry and star power of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts were irresistible.

Pretty Woman: The Musical, at the Kimmel Cultural Campus’ Academy of Music through Jan. 16, is a reverent, if unsubtle, adaptation, with a book cowritten by the film’s director, Garry Marshall (who died in 2016), and its screenwriter, J.F. Lawton. The country rock-influenced score is by Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance.

The musical enjoyed a 13-month Broadway run in 2018-19. This national touring production, directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, is the kind of show that works best in the Academy’s cavernous spaces: lavish costumes and lighting, flashy dance numbers, vocal belting, simple dialogue, broad comic gestures. Always an improbable fable, Pretty Woman, still set in the 1980s, is now an even more dated one. But how much do we care, after nearly two years of no live musicals at all?

The plot and many of the images remain unaltered: Edward Lewis, a rapacious businessman who buys and dismembers distressed companies, purchases the companionship and sexual wares of the vivacious Vivian Ward. He whisks her to his plush Beverly Hills hotel penthouse, dresses her up, takes her to a (gorgeously sung) opera in borrowed jewels, and otherwise jump-starts her metamorphosis into a suitable escort. She, in turn, is seduced, as much by the high life as his charms, and manages both to prod his conscience and touch his heart.

A lot, of course, depends on the chemistry between the leads — in the stage version, Adam Pascal, reprising his Broadway role, and, on opening night, understudy Becca Suskauer, filling in for Olivia Valli. Valli returned to the show Saturday.

With his rugged rock voice, Pascal, best known as the original Roger in Jonathan Larson’s Rent, seems miscast as a straitlaced, middle-aged businessman. He commands the stage, especially when he sings, but without conveying much emotion, or even Gere’s ironic cool. Suskauer is lovely in Gregg Barnes’ dazzling costumes, some of them copying the film’s, and delivers her big Act II number, “I Can’t Go Back,” with conviction. But she doesn’t project the magnetism or nail the eccentricities the role seems to demand. Together, the two turn the requisite sizzle down to a simmer.

Fortunately, the same can’t be said of the kinetic Kyle Taylor Parker, a veteran of Broadway’s Kinky Boots, who plays a chameleonic array of supporting characters under the moniker “Happy Man.” He starts the show as a tour guide, keynoting the ensemble number, “Welcome to Hollywood.” As the hotel’s manager, he doubles as a concierge and dance instructor, teaching the tango in “On a Night Like Tonight.” He even turns up briefly in the orchestra pit.

In “Never Give Up on a Dream,” Parker duets with another powerhouse performer, Jessica Crouch, as Kit De Luca, Vivian’s brassy mentor from the street. The exhortation to dream, remorselessly repeated, is one of several familiar musical theater tropes. Like Tony in West Side Story, Vivian muses that “something’s coming.” The song “I Could Get Used to This,” expressing her infatuation with the trappings of wealth, evokes “If My Friends Could See Me Now” from Sweet Charity. Vivian’s comically imperfect transformation, with her elegant dress undercut by her unrefined manners, mirrors the Ascot racetrack scene in My Fair Lady.

Nothing in Pretty Woman, which ends with the adrenaline jolt of the Roy Orbison and Billy Dees song that supplied the title, will tax our pretty little brains. But maybe, in these pandemic-fatigued times, the show’s burst of light and color and music is entertainment enough.

Pretty Woman: The Musical

Presented by the Kimmel Cultural Campus at the Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St., through Jan. 16. Proof of full vaccination, with ID, required for 12 and over. Children under 12 may supply a negative COVID-19 test result instead. Masks must be worn. Tickets: $20-$134. Information: 215-893-1999, www.kimmelcuturalcampus.org