In “ Working Girl ,” an upwardly mobile Melanie Griffith embodied Tess McGill, a secretary from Staten Island with big hair and even bigger dreams. She thought her new boss (played by Sigourney Weaver in the 1988 Mike Nichols movie) would be an ally, since they were both women trying to make it in a man’s world, but just because Katharine Parker didn’t reach up her skirt, the way Tess’ male superiors had, didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to stab her in the back.

The stars of the Broadway-aspiring stage musical now showing at the La Jolla Playhouse are not Tess and Katherine, but the 1980s themselves: poofy bangs and copious hairspray, nylon stockings and shoulder pads, boomboxes the size of briefcases and synthesizer-driven pop music (supplied here by Cyndi Lauper, whose music and lyrics

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