From Broadway fan to leading man: 'Some Like It Hot' star finds 'gender euphoria' in Toronto stage debut

Kordell auditioned for the national tour and landed the part. Now, the 24-year-old stars in “Some Like It Hot,” running at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre from Feb. 10 to March 15.

“I saw the show and I was literally floored,” Kordell said. “When I tell you, from the costumes, the dancing, the story and the messages… I was like, ‘this show is absolutely perfect.’”

Adapted from Billy Wilder’s 1959 film of the same name, “Some Like It Hot” follows Joe and Jerry, two Prohibition-era musicians who dress as women to join an all-female band and flee to California after witnessing a mob hit. But the stage musical, with a book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin and music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, reimagines the story for contemporary audiences, particularly through Jerry/Daphne’s journey toward self-discovery and authenticity.

In the musical, Jerry comes to realize she is more comfortable living as Daphne, a shift that reframes what was once played for comedy into something more emotionally grounded.

“We could see gender euphoria within the character of Jerry/Daphne in the film, but we didn’t necessarily have that word back then,” Kordell said. “It goes to show that when Jerry begins to find Daphne, that’s a metaphor for when you find happiness and authenticity.”

The original film toes the line on gender fluidity: Jerry/Daphne and Joe/Josephine adapt to their female personas with minimal effort. Both characters are implied to resume their male personas at the end of the film. Jerry/Daphne reveals herself as a man ripping off her wig in front of Osgood, a millionaire who has just proposed. “Well, nobody’s perfect!” Osgood replies.

“It’s quite a progressive film for its time,” Kordell said, adding that the source material still relies on cross-dressing as the butt of the joke.

For story co-writer López, the film was already perfect. “I didn’t see what you could do with it, I honestly didn’t know what the point was,” he said, adding that the challenge was figuring out how to build on it.

“Over the course of several conversations, in which I was very skeptical, I realized that we had an opportunity to write about the nature of identity and gender as it pertains to an individual’s life journey,” López said. “I started to get really interested in the Jerry/Daphne character as our focal point.”

López said the goal was to laugh with the characters instead of at them, while giving them clearer motivations. “We needed to make sure that we also understood the why.”

“I thought, ‘What happens if we can still get the jokes in, if we can still make an audience laugh and have fun, but also take an emotional journey with this character at the same time?’” López said. “Maybe we can turn this into something worthwhile for everybody.”

In the musical, Jerry/Daphne’s gender is portrayed as fluid, with her transformation framed as part of a larger journey toward self-understanding. By the final moments of the show, it is strongly implied that she chooses to continue living as Daphne.

“I don’t have the word for what I feel, I just feel more like myself than I have in all my life,” Daphne sings in the show’s climactic number, “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With a Feather.” “Tonight, I realize Daphne is my one true love.”

“The worst thing I could think of would be to just do the movie on stage,” López said. “It’s a waste of everybody’s talent and time.”

Shaiman and Wittman shared that hesitation. “We both didn’t have a real desire to do a direct screen-to-stage adaptation,” Wittman said. But the duo’s approach to writing the music and lyrics stemmed from working with transgender friends throughout their careers. “The show was a love letter from us to the people that came post-Stonewall and pre-Stonewall,” Wittman says, referencing the 1969 LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States. “We all wanted to honour that struggle.”

Shaiman adds that it was important to acknowledge that transgender people have “existed since the beginning of time,” an understanding that informed songs centered on realization and euphoria, including “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With a Feather.”

The creative team also shifted the show’s setting from 1929 to 1933 and changed the destination from Florida to southern California. The move allowed Shaiman to lean into the jazz idioms of the era and reflect a moment when white and Black composers and lyricists collaborated and shaped new sounds.

The score for “Some Like It Hot” is filled with brassy, jazz-inflected numbers, with Joe and Jerry playing the saxophone and bass respectively, underscoring director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw’s tap-heavy staging.

Another change from the film is that Jerry/Daphne and Sugar, the band’s lead singer, are portrayed as Black. “It’s very dishonest to talk about jazz in the 1930s without including Black musicians,” López says.

The show also addresses racism directly through a prejudiced club owner who initially offers work only to Joe, who is white. In the tap number “You Can’t Have Me (If You Don’t Have Him),” Joe insists that Jerry/Daphne must be hired alongside him, affirming both their friendship and their solidarity in the face of discrimination.

Along with Alex Newell from “Shucked,” Ghee became the first openly nonbinary actor to be nominated for and win a Tony Award in 2023. “For every trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming human, whoever was told you couldn’t be seen, this is for you,” Ghee said in their acceptance speech.

When Kordell landed the role, he felt that “the baton was literally shifted right over” to him. “I had to remind myself that the only shoes I have to fill are those of my own,” he says.

For Kordell, bringing his own perspective to the role was essential. Playing Jerry/Daphne, he said, reinforced the idea that his authenticity is his greatest strength.

“When doing this role, I represent so many communities,” Kordell says. “Being African American and being queer, it’s making sure to lead with the heart and intending to tell the truth every night the best as I can.”