Here’s the thing. I’ve heard amazing things about the performers and the music and even most of the writing. My problem with tootsie is that the concept of having a man (who is both cisgender and straight) decide to dress up as a woman to get ahead in show business ignores the inherently transphobic and violent history of AMAB (assigned male at birth) people wearing dresses/presenting as female. This isn’t a show that celebrates gender non-conforming or trans folks. Instead it uses the “man in a dress” trope to further along a cis, straight man in a very false world. Being a women in show business doesn’t get you ahead - the fact that there are no women on the creative team further drives home that point.

I think a lot of my issues with the show are summed up in Sara Holdren’s review:

“Tootsie as a piece of storytelling is inadvertently summed up by Michael’s agent, Stan (Michael McGrath), when he delivers this exhortation late in the play: “Michael, the world is changing and we have to change with it. Be a he, be a she, be a they, use whatever bathroom you want, and don’t let anybody tell you you can’t.” Stan’s an old white guy in a pin-striped suit, and though it sounds like he’s saying all the right words, there’s still something off in the tone. It’s a little flip, a little fast, a little, “Yeah yeah yeah, I get it already.” But he doesn’t, not really. And neither does Tootsie”

https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/theater-review-can-tootsie-work-when-its-not-1982.html

As much as I wish we were in a “post-gender” world where it doesn’t matter your gender, it does. For example, the off broadway show Safeword just opened and reviews were published. Multiple actors in that show are trans and one in particular was misgendered in most of the reviews, despite their pronouns being plastered all over their website. There are so many trans or non-binary people working in theatre and it’s just a shame that in the same season where great LGBT representation like The Prom and Head Over Heals exist, we get shows that do very well commercially but maybe just shouldn’t have been made in 2019 in the first place.

That’s just my opinion as a non-binary person working at a professional theatre.