Hairspray

Choreographed by Adam Shankman

Produced by Craig Zadan, Neil Meron

Music by Marc Shaiman, Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman

Cast: John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Allison Janney, Jerry Stiller, Paul Dooley, Nikki Blonsky.

A blast of fun, retro music and dance and even more retro attitudes and fashions, Hairspray is based on John Waters’ 1988 film and the Broadway musical of 2002. It’s a musical comedy of vaudevillian mould complete with dame and villain. A brilliant John Travolta makes his musical comeback as Edna Turnblad, larger than life momma of the teenage heroine, Tracy (radiant newcomer Nikki Blonsky), along with broad-stroke comedy and the genre’s requisite one-dimensional, black-and-white characters. It’s appropriate too for a theme of racial integration set in the 60s, where big hair required not so much hairspray as shellac, reflecting rigid societal codes. Making it relevant for all time is the story of young Tracy, whose dream to dance on a teen dance TV show is not daunted by her chubby plus-size.

In school, Tracy’s dreamy preoccupation with dancing lands her in detention, stereotypically full of black kids dancing to their own funky beat. She’s entranced and immediately incorporates some moves into her own dancing style.  A once in a lifetime chance to audition for Corny Collins TV show has Tracy rejected because of her look, but not for long. She’s caught the eye of teen heart throb Link Larkin (Zac Efron). Her optimism and enthusiasm eventually lead to an integration of the black and white kids dancing at the same time, with music and dance seen as the agent for progressive change, love and romance as well as increasing confidence and following one’s dreams.

Michelle Pfeiffer stars hilariously as the evil racist Velma von Tussle, an ex-beauty queen who runs the TV station. Velma’s machinations to keep segregation – in the once weekly ‘Negro Day’ – are matched by her manipulating audience votes to keep her daughter Amber (Brittany Snow) as favourite. Her opposite number is the magnificent Queen Latifah as Motormouth Maybelle, mother of Seaweed (Elijah Kelley) and Inez (Taylor Parks) and completing the mother-daughter relationship theme is Allison Janney as the repressive Prudy Pingleton, mother of Tracy’s best friend Penny, who falls in love with Seaweed and blossoms from innocent to vamp in the process. A sweet dance number in their backyard between Edna and Christopher Walken as the unbelievably dense and slightly creepy Wilbur Turnblad is a further encouragement for Edna, shy about her size, to begin to be proud of herself.

Music and dance as a universal and inclusive language leading to social and personal change is a superb theme for a musical. This one takes stereotypes to a melodramatic extreme and explodes them, while turning the uncool into raging hot.

© Avril Carruthers    1^st September 2007

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