What woman doesn’t love a good revenge-on-the-boss fantasy – especially one who is, by his own admission a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.”

That’s one reason 9 to 5, the movie, was the second highest grossing film of 1980 (behind Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back). Another reason is its stars, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and the inimitable Dolly Parton.

Now Parton and screenwriter Patricia Resnick have teamed up to adapt the film into a musical. Resnick’s book is faithful to the original screenplay, with the addition of the obligatory love song. Parton’s songs are easy to like – fun, bouncy, simple of rhyme and harmony and many are toe-tappable. What more can you ask?

The world premiere of 9 to 5: The Musical plays through Oct. 19 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, directed by Joe Mantello. It is scheduled to open in New York in April 2009.

The best scene may well be the opening, in which sleepy-eyed employees wake up, stumble to the kitchen for coffee and get ready for work. It’s a wonder.

“We got no time to fool around around here,” sings boss Franklin Hart (Marc Kudisch), and the tempo of office life at Consolidated Industries certainly seems frenetic enough to bear that out. Nothing seems to stand still at Consolidated, including the set, a technological wonder (not to mention minefield) of pieces that move and are moved in a dizzying round of activity.

Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler has likewise given the worker drones plenty of clever and frenetic moves to keep the eye busy.

Set in 1979, the plot revolves around three women. Violet Newstead (Allison Janney) is doing her damnedest to break through that glass ceiling and become “one of the boys.” New girl Judy Bernly (Stephenie J. Block), recently separated and in the work force for the first time, is trying to learn the ropes. And Southerner Doralee Rhodes (Megan Hilty), with big hair and a huge cup size, finds herself hit on by the boss and shunned by the other women in the office (“We don’t like her,” Violet tells Judy).

But there’s power in sisterhood, as they will find out.

To be sure, the plot takes a back seat to Parton’s 19 songs, the choreography and that incredible set. But there’s never any doubt what’s going on, nor how it will turn out.

Janney (who won four Emmys as “The West Wing’s” CJ Craig), demonstrates singing chops nobody knew she had and acquits herself nicely, even in the more experienced company of Broadway Wicked veterans Block and Hilty. They’re a dynamite trio, and make the most of Parton’s sprightly songs. Among my favorites: the office gossip song “Tattletales” (“Where else can you go and talk bad about everybody you know and feel good about it?”), Doralee’s “Backwoods Barbie” number and Violet’s “One of the Boys.”

Kudos to the technological wizards who make this work and to costume designer William Ivey Long and wig and hair designer Paul Huntley for effectively transporting us back to the late ’70s, hair and all.

With bounce, sass, a little skin here and there and women on a mission, there’s no way 9 to 5: The Musical can fail.

9 to 5: The Musical plays through Oct. 19 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Shows Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 6:30 p.m.; matinees Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. For more information, including a link to the theater’s web site, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com/links.

My mom always warned me about the kind of people you meet in bars. I guess artist Lawrence (Trevor Bowles) never heard that speech, because at the top of Hairdresser on Fire he meets and takes up with handsome lawyer Allan (Bill Shore).

Scott C. Sickles’ Hairdresser on Fire, the first in a series of Q Plays (“celebrating the humor and drama of gay and lesbian lives”) is on the boards through Oct. 8 at Compass Theatre, directed by the theater’s new managing artistic director, Josh Hyatt.

At first the relationship is just awkward, because Lawrence still lives with ex-boyfriend Niles (Neil McDonald) and their straight gal pal Briony (Krissy Tobey). But soon, predictably (just like mom said), Allan starts to show his controlling side. And then it gets worse. Meanwhile, Niles still wants Lawrence back and Briony wants a boyfriend. Will any of them get what they want?

Unfortunately, the script didn’t make me care very much. It’s too long, too predictable and not helped by uneven acting.

The women do the best acting here. Tobey is terrific as the longing but kinky (and still virginal) Briony, who can wear a scarf more ways than I thought possible. And Gigi Palomera plays several roles; the best is art dealer Celeste, brisk and dismissive, who offers Lawrence the chance to show his work and expects a positive response.

The Q Plays series is off to a somewhat rocky start. I have great hopes for the next show, Michael Thomas Tower’s musical Backwater Blues, opening Oct. 26.

Hairdresser on Fire plays through Oct. 8 as part of Compass Theatre’s Q Plays. Shows Monday through Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m. For more information, including a link to the theater’s web site, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com/links.

I’m sure there’s a point to be made about doping in sports (and specifically steroid use by baseball players), but playwright Itamar Moses never gets around to it in his one-act Back Back Back. The Old Globe Theatre’s production of Moses’ most recent play is at Arena Stage at Copley Auditorium through Oct. 26, directed by Davis McCalllum.

Moses takes three rookies – Raul (Joaquin Perez-Campbell), Kent (Brendan Griffin) and Adam (Nick Mills) from the 1984 U.S. Olympic team (which lost the gold medal to Japan) to the 2005 Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball.

Raul (with a lower east side accent so thick you could trip over it) is willing to do what it takes to make it to the majors. If lifting weights and taking steroids will do it, he’s there.

Tall, blond Kent, the only one of the three who looks like he might play a sport, is also a user. The question at hand might be whether to try to get Adam to join the club.

Then again, it might be something else entirely. I couldn’t tell. Back Back Back is talk talk talk, 90 minutes of f-word punctuated by less than fascinating gab about issues in the sport such as free agency and owner collusion. By far the most engaging is Kent’s advice on how to deal with the press.

Steroids are mentioned obliquely, in a way that seems incongruous and frankly unlikely, given the frank and “fuck”-laden tone of the general conversation. Though I suppose Moses intends this as a consideration of fairness and cheating, it does not come across that way to me.

Berkeley native and Giants fan Moses probably echoes the feeling of many a fan saddened by the knowledge that the people most tainted by the steroid scandal in baseball were his childhood heroes. But exactly what he is trying to tell us about that in Back Back Back remains obscure.

Old Globe Theatre’s production of Back Back Back plays through Oct. 26 at the Arena Stage at Copley Auditorium. Shows Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For more information, including a link to the theater’s web site, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com/links.

Lyric Opera San Diego celebrates the 90th birthday of American musical legend Leonard Bernstein with a smashing production of his seldom-produced operetta Candide, based on Voltaire’s satire of the same name.

But hurry. Candide plays only through Oct. 5 at Birch North Park Theatre. J. Sherwood Montgomery directs.

Voltaire’s mighty poison pen skewers the philosophy of optimism (“all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”), religious extremism, the Paris social scene, Rousseau’s “happy savages” and many other easy targets in this political/social/musical romp.

Voltaire himself (Chris Thompson) narrates the story of Candide (Chad A. Johnson), separated from bride-to-be Cunegonde (Laura Portune) when war breaks out in Westphalia and it seems she has been killed. Candide embarks on a journey which takes him to Lisbon during the Inquisition, Paris (where he finds and loses Cunegonde again), Buenos Aires, the magical, nonexistent Eldorado, and finally to Venice, where he and Cunegonde, who by now have lost everything but each other, decide to “build our house, chop our wood and make our garden grow.”

Candide is a brilliant piece which has never gotten the attention it deserves, partly because it opened the same year as Broadway juggernauts Most Happy Fella and My Fair Lady. The music in Candide is more complex, more operatic than what was seen on Broadway in the ’50s. Vocal and orchestral demands, a large cast, set and costume changes combine to make it difficult to produce.

This is a particularly adept cast. Standouts are Portune’s soaring soprano as Cunegonde, Johnson’s lovely tenor as Candide, mezzo Elizabeth Saunders as The Old Lady, and Michelle Kei Ishuu as Paquette.

Even if the music weren’t great, Candide is worth seeing for the curmudgeonly ideas of the great Voltaire, who did not suffer fools gladly. Bernstein and his slew of collaborators (including Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, John La Touche, Richard Wilbur and even Stephen Sondheim) made Candide a musical, philosophical and comedic delight.

Candide plays through Oct. 5 at Birch North Park Theatre. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. For more information, including a link to the theater’s web site, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com/links.