SEATTLE – “Hairspray” is making a welcome return visit to The 5th Avenue Theatre where it got its off-Broadway start two years ago before it went on to win eight Tony Awards in New York.
It’s a great, big, boisterous Broadway musical with a snappy score, a winning cast, a quirky storyline with a silver lining and sassy dance numbers.
“Hairspray” won’t change your life (or make you long for the days of beehives and ratted hair), but for its two-plus hours it delivers the goods as smoothly as a Buick Roadmaster cruising the interstate.
If you came of age during the late ’50s or early ’60s, the nostalgia factor makes it even more fun.
“Hairspray” is based on the John Waters’ movie, a camp classic set in Baltimore in 1962. Tracy Turnblad (dynamo Keala Settle) is a chubby teen who spends her days watching the Corny Collins teen dance show on TV.
Her plus-plus-size mom, a housewife drudge named Edna (stand-up comic John Pinette in a funny, agile performance), worries that Tracy is turning into a “teenage Jezebel.”
But Tracy wants more than a shot on television. She wants to integrate the Corny Collins show, so that “Negro day” isn’t just once a year and that black and white kids can dance together every day. If she can snag teen heartthrob Link Larkin (talented Austin Miller) along the way, that’s a bonus.
A girl as sweet and good-hearted as Tracy has to have enemies, and Tracy’s are the dim-bulb, big-haired Amber Van Tussle, the reigning dance queen, and Amber’s mother. Velma Van Tussle is a fashion disaster and a ruthless stage mother who wants to stop Tracy, and integration, played to perfection by Susan Cella.
Will Tracy make the Corny Collins show? Will the black kids get to dance with the white kids? Does Edna dump her dowdy housedress for some real ’60s glam and sequins?
What do you think?
The touring production in Seattle is first class. The sets and costumes are bathed in a rainbow of bubble-gum colors, and some of the music is bubble-gum, too.
Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman’s Tony-winning score is a pleasing blend of many sounds, from doo-wop and rock to funk and soul, and when the kids on stage start to dance, which is a lot, it’s hard not to tap along.
There’s even a spine-tingling gospel number in the second act, when Charlotte Crossley brings down the house with “I Know Where I’ve Been.”
“Hairspray” makes its points about integration and racial equality without letting the air out of the party balloon.
Mostly, this is a nonstop celebration of American pop music.
“Hairspray” rocks.
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