Pretty Woman: The Musical Is an Adult Fairy Tale
A fantasy world from once upon a time.
Before your performance of the Pretty Woman National Tour (now playing at DC’s National Theatre) even begins, the Playbill sets expectations.
SETTING: Hollywood – Once Upon a Time in the 1980s
A lot has changed in the world since the release of the original 1990 movie Pretty Woman, the Garry Marshall-directed, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts vehicle. Those were the days when a movie like that could gross almost half-a-billion dollars, finish above movies like Dances with Wolves and Total Recall at the box office, and garner Academy Award nominations.
Those days are long gone. And the story about a hooker with a heart of gold doesn’t play the same these three decades since, so they have to set expectations: this is a fairy tale. It’s a fantasy world from ‘Once Upon a Time’. It may feel like places and people and things we know, but it’s not. If you don’t help yourself, you’ll go crazy thinking about the gender politics and cultural sensitivities that no longer play like they used to. So they ask you to just enjoy it as it is.