9 to 5 is a great movie. 9 to 5 is a great song. 9 to 5 is an awful musical.
First off, to the musical’s credit, the production I saw wasn’t very good, which disappointed me both because I don’t like watching bad productions and because Music Theatre of Wichita usually turns out great productions with very good choreography, very good performances, very good effects, very good music, etc.
This one, however, was kind of the pits. The choreography was mediocre and uninspired; the performances were super lame and based too heavily upon the movie, and the singing was actually kind of bad—why was Violet always flat and why was there so much talk-singing?; the effects were lame (because of the screen thing that I will address later); and the music was both unexciting and not very full-sounding.
So all of that awful stuff isn’t the express fault of the musical itself, but let me assure you, the musical itself has its own flaws that suck and were only compounded by the above suckiness.
I Started Late and Forgot the Dog. 