Cyndi Lauper, that inimitable, brass-lunged icon of 1980s music and fashion, is such an obvious choice to write the music and lyrics for a new stage musical of the quintessential late-’80s social comedy Working Girl (at La Jolla Playhouse Oct. 28-Nov. 30) that it almost seems too good to be true. In fact, it turns out that she was already part of the sound of the original film: Melanie Griffith and Lauper were social acquaintances at the time, and, on a few occasions, the actor asked the singer to speak to her so she could learn the accent.

But Lauper isn’t just putting herself onstage in the new musical, which has a book by Theresa Rebeck and direction by Christopher Ashley. Writing the Tony-winning score for 2013’s Kinky Boots taught her, she said, “to write in other people’s voices. Now I can get inside the characters’ heads and really write for them.”

According to Rebeck, her book offers “a ferociously comedic” take on the movie’s somewhat idealized modern Cinderella story. But the action is still set in the ’80s, in part, Ashley explained, because the plot’s main con—the lead character, a Staten Island secretary, pretends to rule the roost at a Manhattan finance firm while her boss is away—couldn’t be pulled off as easily in the highly connected internet era.

Rebeck said she’s finding writing about the power-suited Reagan era surprisingly fun. “Though it’s politically awful,” she said, “the guys in this show are almost celebratory in their unwokeness. It’s pretty amusing, frankly, to wallow in that.”

Lauper doesn’t sound as tickled. “Unfortunately, this story is just as relevant for women as it was when it came out in 1988,” she said. “In fact, since the rollback of Roe v. Wade, times may even be worse for women. There are still glass ceilings. Women still struggle to be treated equally, especially in the workplace.”

Just not in a workplace where the writer of “She Bop” is on the clock.

Rob Weinert-Kendt (he/him) is editor-in-chief of American Theatre.