Review: MRS. DOUBTFIRE Is the Pleasant Surprise of the Season at Dr. Phillips Center

I was doubtful of Doubtfire. Musicals fashioned out of nonmusical comedy films are seldom stellar, and unlike so many of the patrons inside Dr. Phillips Center on opening night, I hadn’t grown up on 1993’s Mrs. Doubtfire movie, so I couldn’t count on nostalgia to pull me through. I figured I was in for a Tootsie Part Two.

But even a day later, I still find myself marveling at how MRS. DOUBTFIRE beats the odds.

Defying everything I know to be true about musical comedy, this show made me laugh embarrassingly loud and consistently across both acts. Even with a very broad running joke about a character who shouts whenever he lies. (It shouldn’t work, but with Aaron Kaburick in the role, it’s undeniable.) Even with a plot that relies on an impossibly farcical series of misunderstandings. And even without Robin Williams playing the title character, whose entire persona should depend upon Robin Williams playing her.  

Rob McClure, Broadway’s original Doubtfire, puts on her bust and brogue once more for the national tour. Like Williams before him, he has a penchant for finding heart in the outlandish, which just happens to be this story’s secret weapon.

MRS. DOUBTFIRE may be billed as musical comedy, but there is soul-stirring drama at its core.

Daniel Hillard is a struggling voice actor and a well-meaning father who adores his children but takes his marriage for granted. Fed up, his wife Miranda files for divorce. The court sees Daniel’s meager financial prospects as cause for custody going to Miranda. But she’s plenty busy herself, which means she’ll need a nanny for the three kids. When Daniel hears about the job opening, he summons his impressionist talents (and his makeup-artist brother’s penchant for drag) to transform into the most practically perfect nanny this side of Cherry Tree Lane: Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire.

The writing is sharp and witty, and the comic timing tight. John O’Farrell and Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick are the same team who gave us the pitch-perfect original comedy Something Rotten! in 2015. Here, they prove just as adept at adapting, even if DOUBTFIRE’s song score is uneven.  The opening number, “That’s Daniel” (replacing Broadway’s “What’s Wrong with This Picture”) is boringly expositional. And a sequence where Daniel plays around with a sound board goes on entirely too long. Fortunately, those are low bars that later gems like “Big Fat No” handily surpass. At worst, the songs are passable and still serve the story. And in general, they fare better in Act Two, when the stakes are higher with more emotion to explore.

O’Farrell and the Kirkpatricks have found dozens of brilliant little ways to modernize and even improve upon the movie, whether it’s a YouTube cooking tutorial that turns into a song-and-dance sequence or a fix to a tiny little problem in the 1993 script. For example: why did Daniel try on a wig for the likes of Barbra Streisand when he already knew his character needed to be an older Irish lady? This show has an idea of how to answer that, and it involves an unlikely meeting of Margaret Thatcher and Janet Reno — a real highlight of the evening.  

One minor character from the movie, Daniel’s brother-in-law Andre Mayem, gets a bigger part to play here, and understudy Marquez Linder made each and every line a standout. The story is immeasurably better for having more of Mayem (and Linder) in it.

There is a tradeoff, however, in Miranda. The show’s quick pace means that her reasons for divorce are dispatched briskly in the opening moments of the show, and then she spends the rest of Act One neglecting time with her children, subjecting them to unceasing insults about their father, and bringing a new suitor to the dinner table with relatively little time having passed since the divorce that broke their hearts. She is less sympathetic than the book wants her to be, though there is redemption by Act Two, and Maggie Lakis’s compassionate performance throughout helps to bridge the gap.

Giselle Gutierrez stars as the eldest of the Hillard children and immediately impresses with both her voice and her believability as an angsty and wounded but well-meaning teen. Accompanying her on opening night were Axel Bernard Rimmele (who recently wowed as The Artful Dodger in Orlando’s regional production of Oliver! at St. Luke’s and impresses us again here) and Emerson Mae Chan (precious but mercifully not mawkish) as siblings Christopher and Natalie, respectively.

My seatmate at the show happened to have another ticket to see MRS. DOUBTFIRE later again this week. Going in, he was apprehensive that the show might not be good enough to warrant two viewings in a week. But walking out, he was ecstatic to be returning soon… and I was a teensy bit jealous, unable to do the same. The show sure set my doubt on fire. And I suspect that you, little poppets, will love it too.  

Say “HELLL-OOO!” to Mrs. Doubtfire for yourself. The show runs in Orlando through April 28, with tickets available from the Dr. Phillips Center box office or online.

What do you think of MRS. DOUBTFIRE on tour? Let me know on Twitter @AaronWallace. 

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus