Zoren: Tavis Kordell in ‘Some Like It Hot’ opens Tuesday at Forrest Theater

Tavis Kordell has a knack for getting noticed.

A choir singer in high school, and all schools before it, he is asked by a teacher to audition for the spring musical, “Footloose,” and scores the lead role.

He forms a singing group with Christoph Hairston and Julian Kennedy, two friends from Greensboro, North Carolina, and trio ends up getting invited to compete nationally on the 2020 season of “America’s Got Talent.”

They not only compete but make it to the semifinals and earn praise from Simon Cowell and encouragement from Heidi Klum.

The theater bug bites him bad — Kordell’s words in a telephone conversation from Baltimore (more about that in a second) — and he studies musical performance at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

A showcase there earns Kordell an agent, and he’s off to New York.

One day, without ever having seen in 1959 Billy Wilder movie, he goes on a chance outing to see the musical version of “Some Like It Hot.”

He is taken with it and with J. Harrison Ghee’s Tony-winning performance in Jack Lemmon’s role of Daphne. He wants to do that role.

Lo and behold, auditions are held for the tour of “Some Like It Hot,” the one arriving Tuesday for two weeks at Philadelphia’s Forrest Theater, and Kordell makes it his business to get there.

You’ll never guess what happens. You are right!

Kordell books the role of Jerry, the jazz musician who disguises himself as a woman to escape Chicago gangsters who seriously want to end Jerry’s life.

Kordell is the one who will be playing Jerry/Daphne when the curtain goes up at the Forrest, thanks to Ensemble Arts Philly, something he also did in Baltimore, hence his call emanating from there.

While looking forward to seeing Kordell’s talent on opening night — He took tap dancing lessons the moment he got the inkling he wanted to be in “Some Like It Hot” — I could glean some of his appeal from our talk.

He was forthcoming yet always with a sense of perspective, proud of his achievements but modest in tone. He was articulate and could laugh at things that happened to him as easily as talk about how sudden yet solid they were.

“This is my eighth month on the road,” Kordell says. “This is the longest I’ve been away from any place I call home and the longest I’ve been in a production.

“I saw ‘Some Like It Hot’ on Broadway when I was in New York to do some auditioning. I just fell in love with it. It was like ‘awesomeness’ defined. I went home to finish college, but I concentrated on what I’d need to compete for a part in the show.“Yes, the tap dancing I mentioned. I knew I had to brush up on tap.”

The Broadway musical was Kordell’s introduction to “Some Like It Hot.” Though the film is considered to be among the cornerstones of American movie comedy, Kordell caught up with it after seeing Ghee and Christian Borle as Daphne and Joe in New York.

“When I saw the film with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe, I thought it was pretty advanced for its time. The way Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis embraced their female characters pushed limits in a way that might have not been seen before.”

I ask about the last line of the movie, when Jack Lemmon’s Daphne takes off his wig and tells millionaire Joe E. Brown, who wants to marry him, “I’m a man,” and Brown’s character answers, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

Fade out, Cadillac literally rides into the sunset.

“I thought that definitely needed saying,” Kordell says. “It shows that one person saw another for who they were rather than anything specific. That line reminds us of our humanity.”

Being set, as Wilder’s film was, in the 1930s but written for 2023, the musical “Some Like It Hot” with a book by Matthew Lopez (“The Inheritance”) and Amber Ruffin and music by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray”) adds some contemporary wrinkles in the story of guys who embrace a new outlook on life when they dress as women.

“I think the musical goes further than the movie in establishing individual identity,” says Kordell, who like J. Harrison Ghee, identifies as non-binary.

As Kordell noted, after the trip to New York, he returned to college in Greensboro and began to think about the career to come.

Then the agent he acquired through the college calls and tells him he has an appointment to try out for “Some Like It Hot.”

“I didn’t believe it. I thought someone was playing a joke on me.”

No joke.

Then, as happened before in Kordell’s life, someone immediately saw him for who he was or at least recognized his talent and capability. That person was theater veteran Casey Nicholaw, the director of “Some Like It Hot.”

“Here I was hoping I would be chosen for the chorus, and Casey spoke to me about the lead,” Kordell said. “Needless to say, this is a huge kickstart. I’m in college hoping for something one minute, and then it comes true.

“I approached the challenge with honesty. I allowed myself the joy of the moment but I also made sure I put in the work. Acting is about sincerity, and I wanted to be honest and tell the story.

“I had a lot of help. Matt Loehr, who plays Jo/Josephine has a lot of experience on Broadway and on national tours. He has been a great guide as well as a great partner on stage.”

Kordell went to college in Greensboro, but he comes from a smaller town, Rayfield, N.C., near the South Carolina line.

Like many children, he sang in choirs. He never thought of performing much beyond singing.

In his sophomore year of high school, a teacher practically teased him into auditioning for the show, “Footloose.” Friends joined her in encouraging Kordell.

“‘Yeah, yeah, audition,’ ” he said they said.

“I was reluctant. I didn’t want to do it, but I did, and I was cast as the lead. This was an earlier huge kickstart. From my audition of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,’ to the last show, I had a great time.

“The theater bug bit me hard during that run. It’s still biting. I just go with the impulse and do not look back, only forward.”

In college, at age 19 — he’s now age 24 — Kordell forms a vocal group called 1 aChord with Christoph Hairston and Julian  Kennedy. They mostly noodle around, appearing here and there, but as always, even if wasn’t always yet, Kordell and his ensemble garner attention.

They are asked to audition for NBC’s “America’s Got Talent.”

They get praise at their on-air auditions — Coldplay’s “Fix You” done in a gospel interpretation — from Simon Cowell.

“Rather than being hard on us, he led a standing ovation of the judges. We went on to the semifinals. We didn’t win, but Heidi Klum came up to us and said she thinks we have a gift.

“That’s the way I see my talent, as a gift, one I have to nurture and develop. At the same time, I concentrate on living and enjoying the moment and not the future. The future will come, and I am optimistic about it.

“But right now, it’s ‘Some Like It Hot,’ keeping myself healthy and focused, and enjoying this time while trusting good will continue to come.”

Laid-off on-air personality with new gig

One of the local radio personalities whose name figured in last week’s story about the constant layoffs at Philly stations, has surfaced.

In New Jersey.

Tyrone Johnson, once host of “The Best Show Ever?” on The Fanatic (97.5 FM) was heard on Friday as Judi Franco’s co-host on WKXW (101.5 FM), which brands itself as New Jersey (or NJ) 101.5 and broadcasts out of Ewing.

He was sitting in for Dennis Malloy who is Franco’s regular sidekick on the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. talk program that concentrates on news and current events more than Johnson’s usual topic, sports.

Johnson was quick to find a landing spot, even if it is as a fill-in. He was let go at 97.5 in April. The 2 to 6 p.m. time slot he presided over for almost three years now features Connor Thomas and Ricky Bottalico.

Tyrone is the second Johnson to work with Franco in Malloy’s absence. Eric Johnson, a former 2 to 6 p.m. host at WMGK (102.9 FM), owned, like The Fanatic, by Beasley, has also been a guest host on 101.5’s midday show.

Kruk/Anderson tour auction

Minutes before Saturday’s bidding closed for The Phantastic Auction, an annual drive-by Phillies Charities event to boost funds for the gifts the Phillies give each year, to an array of nonprofits, I checked on the item that would have interested me most, assuming I had the money to compete for it.

It is a pre-game tour of Citizens Bank Park by the comic relief among Phillies broadcasters, John Kruk and Larry Andersen, who were teammates on the 1993 team that wen to the World Series and lost to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Kruk and L.A. would lead a group of six, the winner and five friends, to see the broadcast booth, the media room, and various other parts of the Phillies home.

They would then watch batting practice from behind home plate.

At the deadline, the leading, and I imagine the winning, bid was $7,050 — yep, out of my league.

Given the humor Kruk and Andersen bring to their color analysis, the tour might be secondary to listening to them banter.

Carell bright spot in dull ‘Four Seasons’

You know you’re in trouble when the best performance in an ensemble cast is by Steve Carell.

Which is why “The Four Seasons,” a TV series based on Alan Alda’s 1981 movie of the same name, became a “No, just no,” after a screening of an episode and a scooch.

And only because the first episode ended with a kind of cliffhanger to which — all credit, though scant, to the writers — I had to see what happened.

A lot, but you see it only in aftermath and not in full drama.

Episode Two begins with a scene that makes the ending of the opener a foregone and distant conclusion.

The problem with “The Four Seasons” is whether it focuses on summer, autumn, winter or spring, it stays bland in content and crisp in approach.

It’s like the television version of a beach novel, lots of potential but all presented in a technicolor gleam that signals nothing too important or emotionally tough is really going to happen.

Colman Domingo, when given the chance, brings up the tone of the Netflix series and even veers toward occasion poignancy.

Sadly, he doesn’t get enough opportunities to make a real difference.

Carell wins the day by giving some edge to the character he’s going to play the same way, and with the same dudgeon, he portrays every character.

Tina Fey, Will Forte, Marco Calvani, Kerry Kenney-Silver, and someone who is usually the brightener in artificially sunny material,Erika Hennigsen, just, in beach novel fashion, breeze along with the breeze doing stock turns.

Fey is among the writers.

She and her fellow scribes attempt to show well-heeled, witty people negotiating through middle age with some twentyish daughters and Hennigsen’s “younger woman” along for the ride.

Domingo’s few gems and the cliffhanger excepted, is a contrived image of comfortable living that gives contrivance a badname.