Show: Hairspray
Music: Marc Shaiman
Lyrics: Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman
Book: Mark O’Donnell & Thomas Meehan
Director: Jordan Brennan & Louis Palena
Music Direction: Jenna Parrilla
Where: Music Mountain Theatre in Lambertville, NJ
Remaining Performances: November 17 at 8 pm, November 18 and 2 pm and 8 pm and November 19 at 2 pm
Company: Music Mountain Theatre
Rights Holder: Music Theatre International
Generally in my reviews (what few of them there are), I try to present some critique or insight into the play from the point of view of a somewhat knowledgeable audience member. I might not succeed at my goal, but that is what I’m trying to do here. However, for Hairspray I’m basically going to be throwing that goal out the window. This show was so much fun that I’m basically going to gush for a couple of pages here. If that interests you, great! Continue reading. But if it doesn’t then, well, you’ve been warned.
The Show
Hairspray is more likely to be familiar to its audience than any of the previous three musicals that I’ve reviewed, mostly because of its popular broadway run from 2002 to 2009. During that time it made a lot of money and netted a number of awards, including the Tony for Best Musical. It’s certainly the first of the shows that I have reviewed that I had already seen.
The story is pretty straightforward: Tracy Turnblad (played by Lucy Fisher) introduces the audience to her world through her lens of constant optimism. She is equal parts insecure and outgoing, but she is defined by her tenacity. In her quest she drags her best friend, Penny (played by Colby Langweiler) and her mother Edna (played by Michael Moeller), forcing them to confront a world that hasn’t been overly kind to them.
Of course, that’s the abstract, dramatic reading of the play. Tracy’s dream is to become a member of The Corny Collins Show (with Corny played here by Louis Palena). Her initial attempt to audition results in failure when she reveals her forward thinking politics (she’s pro-integration), but she eventually makes her way onto the show against the wishes of producer Velma Von Tussle (Anna Hentz) and her presumptive star daughter, Amber (Jill Palena).
At this point Hairspray throws the audience a curveball when Tracy takes it upon herself to help integrate Corny’s show with her friends Seaweed (James LeGette), Ines (Suryi Williams) and Motormouth Mabel (Taylor Pickett-Stokes), the producer of the Corny Collins Show’s Negro Day. This throws a wrench in the works of Tracy and hearthrob Link Larkin’s (Matthew Robertson) budding romance, since he is trying to use the show to attain stardom.
The Great Stuff!
Basically everything. I love the show Hairspray almost too much. It is so unrelentingly funny and positive that it is hard not to smile as one song after another gets stuck in your head. The script manages to give the audience sympathetic characters while still driving home joke after joke after joke. And the scenes are paced in such a way that the plot doesn’t have to stop and wait for too many long scene changes.
The set for this production was generally outstanding, filling up the stage and really setting the world for the characters to inhabit. Character design (costumes and wigs, also by Brennan and Palena respectively) was well done throughout, which is vital because Hairspray uses those character designs to set itself up as happening in an almost surreal version of the 1960s.
As for the actors, many of them appeared to be born to play their parts. Everyone in the this production does an admirable job, but there are some standouts. Lucinda Fisher as Tracy can’t really steal the show because she is the main character, so she simply owns the entire show instead. Her confidence in the character (whom she has played before) put me at ease as an audience member and let me just enjoy every aspect of the show as it unfolded. David Whiteman and Michael Moeller as Tracy’s parents Wilbur and Edna imbued their characters with such life and natural humor that it made Tracy’s confidence and tenacity almost inevitable. Langweiler clearly understands what makes Penny tick and delivers a fantastic vocal performance that contrasts well with Penny’s apparent sheepishness. Pickett-Stokes brings the show to a stop to let you breath and just wash in her rendition of “I Know Where I’ve Been” (Her voice was so good it drove me a little crazy). Louis Palena rounds things out confidently with his Corny Collins, squeezing every last laugh out of his performance.
I can’t forget Suryi Williams as Little Inez, a part which often steals the show. That is no exception here. I suggest watching her whenever she’s onstage because she brings everything to Inez that you would hope she would.
The Not Great Stuff…
This show was amazing. There isn’t much here that isn’t nitpicking. Yes some of the actors were more comfortable on stage than others, and some of the singers were better musicians than others, but this cast is so energetic and so generally talented that you will inevitably be drawn in and carried away along with them.
One thing I will say for the script: After having seen this show on broadway and watched the movie and the NBC live version and now the MMT version, the story does suffer a little bit from One-Damn-thing-after-another syndrome. Tracy and her parents are the glue that keeps everything together, and collectively they are onstage for most of the show, but if it weren’t for their characterization I think that an audience could start to get confused. The story isn’t really about the story anyway, so that isn’t a problem, but if you told me that my plot summary above was dead wrong because I left out crucial details, I wouldn’t have a way of knowing if you are right or not.
As usual with MMT, there was a backing track, some people will be able to accept it and others won’t. There were times, though, it sounded almost like the backing track actually had a recording of the vocals on it. To be clear, it was obvious that everyone in the show was actually singing, I’m not accusing anyone of lipsyncing (you couldn’t get away with it in that space). But it was annoying to hear “Good Morning Baltimore” while some of the backup singing sounded like a synthesizer.
There were, again. some sound issues early in the show, as there were with Phantom. These did get resolved as the performance went on and were not the end of the world, but it’s worth mentioning again until the sound issues get figured out.
The set, while great looking, did have some platform problems; namely the truck that was used for the Turnblad apartment needed brakes or something to keep it from moving under the actors’ feet. The platform was big enough that it was clearly safe, but it still made me nervous for the actors when their acting space kept moving under their feet.
The Shining Stars
The student council (the high schoolers that dance on the Corny Collins Show) was full of seasoned performers and it showed. I often had a hard time focusing on anyone particular throughout the show because they were always finding small, interesting, funny things to be doing. Unfortunately I can’t pick any one person in particular here because they were all so entertaining (which is why I love this show).
Who do I think I am? 