Dolly Parton herself wrote the music to 9 to 5:The Musical, running this month at the Victoria Theatre, and it's a slapstick revue featuring over-the-top wigs and a comedic commitment to specifically recreating the year 1980.

The new production of 9 to 5: The Musical at the Victoria Theater (running through September 27) is not one of those drag queen parody remakes that are so exceedingly popular in this town.  This 9 to 5 stage remake had an actual Broadway run in 2009, which scored four Tony nominations, including Best Original Score for the music and lyrics written by Parton, and for Best Actress in a Musical for Allison Janney in the Lily Tomlin role. And just to make things more timely and interesting, there are rumors that a Jennifer Aniston remake of 9 to 5 is currently in the Hollywood pipeline.

This 9 to 5 at the Victoria gives you something of a Dolly Parton “cameo,” that will thrill her fans. And Parton's score here is great. It’s not like you get the one good song that everyone knows and then a bunch of clunkers — there are 19 songs here, and they are all quality numbers.

This production revives the original 1980 workplace sexual harassment comedy blockbuster about three office workers who kidnap and imprison their boss. But there is no real feminist subtext this time around — it is simply uproarious and even a little cartoonish. There’s a multilevel stage layout that uses modern theatrical effects to very specifically recreate the year 1980, and there’s unapologetically outdated gags about Sanka coffee, typewriter rubout erasers, and Atari video games.

Three main characters carry this show very well and have and have terrific chemistry. In the Dolly Parton role of Doralee, Malia Abayon has very big… shoes to fill. But she’s got a voice that absolutely lives up to the part. Jessica Coker takes the Lily Tomlin part while Majesty Scott has the Jane Fonda role, all of them (and rest of the cast) in very out-of-fashion wigs and early 80s wardrobes.

Every character in this show approaches their role as if they’re the comic relief, and absolutely no one in the cast plays it straight. Everyone is out to steal the show, even the ensemble, and director Christina Lazo (who also did the relentlessly fun choreography) gleefully allows this.

So it’s largely just a screwball lark. Though that energy trips up a bit in the second act with the shoehorning of two romance-related subplots, both of which seem to be crammed in just to provide "11 o'clock numbers" for the cast. But these detours come right when the already rollicking plot is at maximum tension, and they undercut the play’s larger theme of women being able to run things capably without men around.

Still, both lead performers deliver these numbers very capably, and they’re still good songs. And this 9 to 5 is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. It’s not one of those paint-by-numbers musical remakes of an 80s movie — it takes a legitimate artistic risk by going even sillier than the original. And for that, all the work in 9 to 5: The Musical really pays off.

As an aside, we’ll remind you that the opening credits for the movie 9 to 5 were largely shot right here in San Francisco’s Financial District, so this production could be seen as something of a homecoming. None of the rest of the film was shot here, and Jane Fonda flew up to SF just to shoot about ten seconds of footage for those opening credits. We’ll see if Jennifer Aniston does the same.

9 to 5: The Musical plays at The Victoria Theatre through September 27. Tickets here.

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Image: Jessica Coker (Violet), Malia Abayon (Doralee), Majesty Scott (Judy) and the cast of Ray of Light Theatre’s 9 to 5 the Musical at the Victoria Theatre. Photo by Jon Bauer.