When director Scott Ellis asked Santino Fontana to play the title role in the new musical comedy Tootsie, based on the 1982 hit movie, the star had two requests. He wanted his character, Dorothy Michaels—the female alter ego of an unemployed male actor named Michael Dorsey—to have a Southern accent. And he insisted that at some point Dorothy wear the signature red sequined “Tootsie” dress.

The wig for Dorothy Michaels as played by Santino Fontana. Designed by Paul Huntley. Photograph by Thomas Prior. William Ivey Long makes adjustments to the dress. Photograph by Thomas Prior.

For Dorothy’s spoken voice, Fontana channeled “a softer Laura Bush.” And for the figure-hugging, glitzy gown, he placed himself in the hands of costume wizard William Ivey Long, who confected a total of 20 looks for Fontana’s female persona. As a result, Fontana says, he has discovered what it feels like to walk, quite literally, in a woman’s shoes. “If you are trying hard to identify with what women are going through—and you still don’t understand—this show will be very helpful,” he promises.

Long sketches the iconic tootsie dress. Photograph by Thomas Prior.

Fontana learned to sing in a constricting corset—something, his wife reminded him, women have had to do for hundreds of years. Yet the show’s “balls-out comedy” (as composer and lyricist David Yazbek quips) does not ever come from the sight of a man in a dress. Rather, the humor arises from book writer Robert Horn’s bull’s-eye deployment of zingers—and the cast’s infallible delivery of them. About the farcical nature of the show, opening in April at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre, Horn says, “If you can get people to laugh, you can get people to think.”

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