The Night 9 to 5 Stopped for Dolly Parton, and What the Savoy Still Remembers
The gasp went round the Pavilion Theatre in Worthing before anyone had explained why. Karla Tracey, who plays Doralee in the UK touring production of 9 to 5 The Musical, walked to the front of the stage before Tuesday night’s performance and told the audience that Dolly Parton had died earlier that day in Nashville, aged 80, after what her representatives described as a brief battle with cancer.
“Tonight, we will perform the piece as she intended, with great respect and affection for the woman whose vision brought it to life,” Tracey said, before adding a line that turned a routine curtain speech into something closer to a wake. “As we begin, we dedicate tonight’s performance to Dolly Parton, with our deepest thanks for the music, laughter and joy she gave us.”
It is the kind of moment that happens in theatres up and down the country whenever a writer or composer connected to a running show dies mid-run, but 9 to 5 carries a particular weight in this respect. Parton wrote every note and lyric in the score herself, adapting her own 1980 film, in which she starred alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, into a stage musical she was closely, personally involved in shaping.
London has its own specific chapter in that story, and it happened only a few miles from where this run of 9 to 5 will eventually finish. On 17 February 2019, 9 to 5 The Musical opened at the Savoy Theatre in the West End, and Parton herself flew in for the night. She appeared at the curtain call to a standing ovation, joked from the stage about catching a flight straight back to Nashville, and told the cast, in front of a sold-out house, that they had “made her look good.” Bonnie Langford and Brian Conley were both in that original West End company, Langford as the fierce office manager Roz and Conley as the show’s grotesque, sexist boss Franklin Hart, the role written to be booed and adored in the same scene. Neither has commented publicly since the news broke, but both were there on the night Parton herself walked out among a London cast for the only time this production has ever staged in the city she wrote it for.
Paul Jepson has a rarer vantage point than most on what has happened this week, because he sits across both eras of the show. Jepson directed the 2019 Savoy production and is chief executive of Landmark Theatres, the company now running the 2026 UK tour that brought 9 to 5 to Worthing. In a statement issued after Parton’s death, Jepson said: “We would like to take a moment to remember the remarkable Dolly Parton. Our thoughts are with Dolly’s family, friends and all those around the world who loved and admired her. It has been an honour for all of us to work on this show, originally written and produced by Dolly, whose extraordinary talent, creativity and spirit are woven into every part.”
Her philanthropy reached London directly, too, long before this week, through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which began sending free books to children under five in Wandsworth. It is a smaller, quieter legacy than a West End opening night, but it points to the same instinct that ran through her stage work: a determination that the story be shared as widely, and as generously, as possible.
Parton’s own next stage project will now open without her. Dolly: A True Original Musical, a show about her own life that she helped write and had described as the culmination of her career, is scheduled to begin previews on Broadway later this year, with an opening night set for January 2027 on what would have been her 81st birthday. Last month, in a statement about the show, she said: “My whole life has been a musical. A grand ole opera really and I can’t wait to present it to you on Broadway. I hope you enjoy watching as much as I’ve enjoyed livin’ it.”
At the Pavilion Theatre on Tuesday night, the audience that gasped at Tracey’s announcement stayed to watch the show anyway, in a room built for a very different kind of evening a few hours earlier. 9 to 5 continues its UK tour, with Worthing performances running until 29 August, before the production moves on to Coventry and then Hastings in September.
9 to 5 continues on tour through September, and EyeOnLondon expects the show’s remaining London-adjacent dates to carry more weight than usual this year.
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