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Coif tease
Hairspray is irrepressible fun
BY CAROLYN CLAY
Hairspray
Book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan. Music by Marc Shaiman. Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. Directed by Jack O’Brien. Choreography by Jerry Mitchell. Sets by David Rockwell. Costumes by William Ivey Long. Lighting by Kenneth Posner. Sound by Steve C. Kennedy. Orchestra conducted by Jim Vukovich. With Carly Jibson, Bruce Vilanch, Jordan Ballard, Terron Brooks, Susan Cella, Charlotte Crossley, Sandra DeNise, Joanna Glushak, Blake Hammond, Troy Britton Johnson, Austin Miller, Kianna Underwood, and Todd Susman. At the Colonial Theatre through November 1.


It’s a good thing the 1962-set Hairspray precedes the anti-aerosol era, because it’s got more spritz than anything shot out of a Broadway canister in ages. Based on the 1988 John Waters film about a zaftig teen determined to integrate an American Bandstand–like Baltimore TV show, the 2003 Tony-winning musical is a stylishly tongue-in-cheek energy assault from start to finish. They must feed the entire cast amphetamines.

If so, the biggest helping goes to 19-year-old newcomer Carly Jibson, the pint-sized, full-figured hurricane out of Muskegon, Michigan, who plays Tracy Turnblad, the chubby working-class girl who sparks her way onto The Corny Collins Show, steals resident hunk Link Larkin from resident blonde bitch Amber Von Tussle, and courageously pursues her bouffant aspirations to make the show less a sock hop than a real mixer. From the opening number — which finds Tracy rising at full throttle from a vertical bed surrounded by pink shag carpet and all the detritus essential to a ’60s teen to bleat "Good Morning Baltimore" — to the Sherman tank of exultant rhythm that is the show’s finale, the self-illustrating "You Can’t Stop the Beat," Jibson is one vacuum-packed, non-stop Energizer Hair hopper. Indeed, the entire cast’s octane is as high as its tresses.

Hairspray is an old-fashioned feel-good musical — who can disagree with its message that racism and superficiality are not only bad but also square? — that manages to be a whole lot hipper than Oklahoma! It’s not as subversive as the film (itself among the more tasteful of the Waters canon), and memory-lane lovers will miss the parade of actual early-’60s hits Waters used to accompany Tracy on her journey to local teen stardom and breezily naive civil-rights agitation. (They will also miss Sonny Bono’s character, who has been cut.) But it stays true to Waters’s Divine inspiration, casting a large man in the alternately strutting and touching role of Tracy’s mom, Edna: incomparable croaker Harvey Fierstein won a Tony for his turn on Broadway, and the touring production comes up with the good if unlikely idea of cuddly comedy-writer-to-the-stars Bruce Vilanch, whose vastly bechinned Edna proves a dainty, ad-libbing rumbler. Making his surprise final entrance on the night of the Sox’ first playoff game against the Yankees, Vilanch, a Dolly-Levi-at-Harmonia-Gardens-worthy vision in scarlet, remarked, "The only thing missing from this outfit is red socks."

Moreover, the book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan is at once starry-eyed and deliciously ironic. (When various Turnblads and Von Tussles start appearing in African-American DJ Motormouth Maybelle’s Record Shop, one regular remarks, "If we get any more white people in here, it’ll be a suburb.") And the music by South Park composer Marc Shaiman, though ersatz, evokes the era, from Elvis and Brenda Lee to the Ronettes and Supremes (whose Hairspray stand-in, the Dynamites, step right out of a poster to regale the blossoming Edna with "Welcome to the ’60s"). The score — which includes a swoony Elvis number for Link that turns Tracy hilariously and libidinously paralytic — is dynamite to dance to, and choreographer Jerry Mitchell takes full advantage, mixing Broadway momentum and leaps into his Stricken Chicken and Mashed Potatoes.

But the real secret to Hairspray’s success is the way it rides the line between Kennedy-era innocence and outright cartoon (though for my taste the performances by the play’s vacuous villains could be reined in a little). David Rockwell’s pop-art scenery is out-screamed only by William Ivey Long’s parade-of-paisley, pre–Carnaby Street costumes, a shiny jungle of fuchsia, orange, and aqua. And though no one bests Jibson (she’s like a squeaky Ethel Merman crossed with a particularly propulsive Hobbit), there are powerful, and even delicate, turns in supporting roles. As Maybelle, big-voiced Charlotte Crossley stops the show with the gospel-tinged anthem "I Know Where I’ve Been." And Todd Susman, with his sloping clown’s eyebrows, makes an endearing foil for Vilanch as Edna’s husband, Wilbur; the two even have an old-fashioned dance duet, "Timeless to Me," in which Wilbur does the high harmonizing while Edna heads for the laryngeal basement. I’m not sure Hairspray will enlighten anyone, but it will mist you with bygone teen spirit and Maximum-Hold you in your seat.


Issue Date: October 17 - 23, 2003
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