The Opposite of Sex Extends San Fran Run
The Opposite of Sex features music and lyrics by Douglas J. Cohen and a book by Robert Jess Roth and Cohen based on Don Roos' screenplay for the 1998 film of the same name. The Opposite of Sex is about a 16-year-old girl Kerry Butler with a dead stepfather and an emotionally unstable mother. She decides to make a break for it, moves in with her gay half-brother John Bolton and seduces his hot boyfriend David Burtka. And that's only the beginning. In addition to Butler, Bolton and Burtka, the cast of this world premiere includes Karen Ziemba, Jeff McCarthy, Ian Scott McGregor, Joe Mandragona and Donna Vivino.
The show, directed by Roth Beauty and the Beast, opened in San Francisco on October 2 to mixed reviews. The San Francisco Chronicle's Steven Winn wrote: “The musical version delivers the film's hairpin-turn story and Dedee's withering attitude intact. It also finds a way, in its skillfully unassuming music, modest if sometimes to a fault lyrics and light-fingered performances, to open up the emotional gates of the original without letting generic musical theater sentimentality flood in.” However Variety's Dennis Harvey slammed the tuner, writing: “Softening the film's witty viciousness, providing no memorable tunes in a score that sounds like clutter-inclined William Finn without his distinctive neurotic sensibility, this Sex strands itself in ways beyond the rescue of cast or director Roth. In fact, their contributions barely register, save as evidence of an uphill struggle.”