Review: Alliance musical updates “Trading Places” without making it vital

Though its cast is extremely talented and its vibe is fun, the musical adaptation of the edgy, problematic 1983 film Trading Places, onstage at the Alliance Theatre through June 26, feels much too safe to be memorable.

This feels like an odd conclusion to reach when Trading Places: The Musical has gender-swapped the Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis characters from the film, but that daring set of choices doesn’t lead the story down any surprising new paths. The story, though now technically more inclusive because it features gay characters and gives a one-note girlfriend character from the film a story arc, still ends up in the same places it did in 1983. And it’s feel-good and toothless now.

The bones of the original film’s plot are still there. In 1983 Philadelphia, a Black street hustler named Billie Rae Valentine (Aneesa Folds) and a white, entitled commodities broker named Louis Winthorpe III (Bryce Pinkham) accidentally collide on the street, and the hustler tries to return the broker’s briefcase. Winthorpe calls it a theft. The cops arrest Valentine. 

And the Duke Brothers, two old, rich, devious and powerful men who own Winthorpe’s brokerage, decide to switch up the lives of this “prince” and “pauper” in a one-dollar bet to settle their arguments about human nature. Mortimer (Marc Kudisch) and Randolph (Lenny Wolpe) disagree whether nature or nurture play bigger roles in human fate.

Soon, Winthorpe finds himself losing a job, home and his fiancée, Penelope (McKenzie Kurtz), struggling to stay out of the gutter. And Valentine finds herself in a luxury townhouse with a butler named Coleman (Don Stephenson), a sports car and a new job with the Dukes, determining whether to invest in pork bellies and frozen orange juice.

The first half of the musical, which deals with these switched circumstances, is where it has the most fun. The fish-out-of-water comedy elements are particularly funny, especially Winthorpe’s downfall.

Pinkham is given a lot to play as the fussy, spoiled Winthorpe is arrested, fired, dumped and deloused. He is forced to pawn his beloved designer watch and is only able to survive thanks to the kindness of a campy Latin drag queen named Ophelia (Michael Longoria, replacing Curtis’ hooker character from the film). Winthorpe is selfish and ridiculous, full of racist and classist microaggressions, yet Pinkham manages to make the character childlike and naive enough to be sympathetic.

A glorious, gifted singer who made her Broadway debut in Freestyle Love Supreme, Folds gets lots of opportunities to show her vocal range. She’s really quite something. But her character Billie Rae doesn’t get as much to do within this story, thanks to a book by Thomas Lennon that gives the character very little opposition, conflict or plot complication that she has to overcome after the initial setup is played.

Though Billie Rae is a con artist, she’s introduced as a beloved, caring and savvy member of the Philadelphia streets. Sure, Billie Rae is selling boxes of bricks for $50 to entitled, gullible ladies looking for deals on VCRs. But she’s also embodying the spirit of Philadelphia in the opening number, as she walks the audience through a tour of cheesesteak vendors, workmen and prostitutes. And she steals furs only to give to the destitute homeless population. She’s a dream-filled Robin Hood or Little Orphan Annie, left to her own devices and good nature after her loving family has died.

In the original film, Eddie Murphy’s crass character pretended to be blind and legless. He lied to his cellmates about being a violent pimp. When he proved to be savvy at business and fought overt racism in the film, it was compelling. 

The sweeter, subtler Billie Rae doesn’t dare do anything like that in this musical. Heck, even the racism she encounters is toned-down, though the show is still set in 1983, because the antagonists aren’t allowed to be evil, merely goofy and greedy. And she never gets to fight any sexism in her new workplace. The fact that she’s a woman barely factors into the plot at all. 

After the character becomes aware of the bet at the show’s half, Folds gets surprisingly little to do, apart from singing a vocally impressive yet lyrically stale 11 o’clock number, “Not Anymore,” about Billie Rae not wanting to be alone.

Folds’ stage presence is electric, and the audience loves her. She is up for the challenge. But the role should be better, infused with more conflict and tension. Pinkham gets an arc to play; Folds does not.

Lennon’s book could have taken more liberties and risks with the story, since this update already was making a massive diversion from the source material. What if Winthorpe and Valentine had been in a romance? Or Winthorpe and the drag queen Ophelia? Such avenues are left unexplored in this friendly, safe show.

Much of the music, written by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, seems designed to evoke other modern Broadway hit numbers instead of the music of the 1980s. The opening song, which introduces our heroine and her sordid hometown, uses the lyric hook of “Welcome to Philly, screw youse!” Fans of Hairspray will be immediately reminded of “Good Morning Baltimore,” which was funnier than this.

When Billie Rae is introduced to her new life of luxury, the song she sings is a hilariously expletive-laden variation on “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here” from Annie. The song is the comedy high point of the show, though it is not the most interesting number. It’s funny but not original. Riffing on a song for kids and turning it filthy takes a page out of The Book of Mormon.

The best song of Trading Places isn’t one that plays familiar beats. “What Time Is It in Gstaad?” a love ballad that Winthorpe sings to his wristwatch while mourning his lost riches, succeeds because it is both deeply ridiculous and delivered by Pinkham with genuine emotion.

The worst song is the bland closing number, a title song sung by the group that seems to only exist so that they can put the title of the show in a song.

The cast is uniformly strong. Kurtz is terrific as Penelope, who has spent her entire life preparing to be a vacant trophy wife but now longs for meaning. Longoria and Kudisch get a great dance number. And Stephenson gets his best moments when he addresses the audience directly as the narrator.

The most inexplicable character in the show is Beeks, the Dukes’ criminal henchman, played by Josh Lamon. Beeks dresses in clashing patterns, speaks with a helium-tinged falsetto and gets a wacky, gigantic production number wherein he fakes a limp one minute and does pirouettes the next. It’s a spectacle and well-performed, yet it’s as madcap as the Marx Brothers. It makes little sense here.

The direction from Kenny Leon is smooth and polished. The set and lighting design from Beowulf Boritt and Adam Honoré is most impressive during a train heist sequence, which is played on an elevated platform midstage with slick neon design and strobe effects. One of the best touches in the set design is a nod to the original film; a wall of portraits of esteemed men includes two surprising faces.

Unlike more successful film-to-musical transitions with Broadway ambitions, Trading Places isn’t bold, risky or original enough to justify its own existence. The source material was R-rated tacky and dated, certainly. But now, it feels too sanitized, softened and PG-13.

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Benjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019. His plays have been produced at The Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan, as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and the Center for Puppetry Arts. His book Impacted was published by The Story Plant in 2021 and is a Georgia Author of the Year Award nominee in the first novel category.