Hairspray musical recaptures spirit of the 1960s

John Travolta’s rendition was a ‘travesty’. In this production of a beloved 1960s musical, the acting resists both ham and cheese.

Rhonda Burchmore and cast in Hairspray. Picture: Jeff Busby

It’s worth considering how improbable Hairspray’s success is. Producer Margo Lion had the insanely ambitious idea that John Waters’ 1988 tailfeather-shakin’ jukebox movie could be turned into a stage musical, but with original music. This was as jukebox musicals of existing hit songs were beginning their infestation of the world’s theatres.

Marc Shaiman’s music is un­ashamedly nostalgic – nodding to 1960s songwriting styles rather than to individual melodies – but his score has some honest-to-god heart-bursting bangers: Good Morning Baltimore, I Can Hear the Bells, and I Know Where I’ve Been head the list. They’re instantly familiar and likeable.

Lion’s quixotic optimism parallels the plot line, which follows the fortunes of the Pollyanna-ish Tracy Turnblad (23-year-old Carmel Rodrigues making her professional debut), a teen obsessed with an after-school TV talent show and its leading heart-throb, Link Larkin (Sean Johnston).

A pocket rocket and self-proclaimed “heavyweight champion” dancer, Tracy is determined to be part of the Corny Collins Show and get the guy, too. Repeatedly held for detention, mostly for her beehives rather than her misbehaviour, Tracy finds herself hanging with the black kids at her school who show her how to “use the blues” in her dancing.

Dance is their lingua franca. She’s amazed by their moves, they’re impressed by her skills and openness.

Todd McKenney, Asabi Goodman, Mackenzie Dunn, Shane Jacobson and Carmel Rodrigues in Hairspray. Picture: Jeff Busby

In 1962 Baltimore, Tracy is ahead of her time. She can’t see why the Corny Collins Show shouldn’t be racially integrated or why someone as under-tall as herself shouldn’t be a leading lady. She loves herself, and others, from the inside out.

Tracy locks horns with the TV show’s racist and domineering producer, Velma (Rhonda Burchmore), and Velma’s cruel daughter Amber (Brianna Bishop). They treat Tracy vilely and she fights back with the fearlessness of the righteous.

Framed with the softly curved lines of a period TV screen, David Rockwell’s sets leave ample room for the sharply executed dance routines choreographed by Jerry Mitchell and rigorously re-created by Dominic Shaw.

Shane Jacobson and Todd McKenney. Picture: Jeff Busby

Initially, the dancing seems a higher priority than the singing, and this is reflected in a sound mix that is all boom and bass, leaving the voices thin and shrill and the lyrics barely decipherable.

The balance is righted when DJ-matriarch Motormouth Maybelle (Asabi Goodman) and her entourage come on to the scene. Her spiritual torch song I Know Where I’ve Been and the singing of the aptly named trio The Dynamites (Andrea Fleming, Nya and Kristin Paulse) left audiences slack-jawed with awe.

In the 1980s film, Tracy’s parents Edna and Wilbur were played by the remarkable, abject, masochistic and entirely unique Divine and Jerry Stiller, respectively. When this musical adaptation was filmed in 2007, John Travolta played Edna. To be blunt, Travolta’s performance redefined the word travesty. Here, Shane Jacobson has the unenviable task of cross-dressing and donning the fat suit. He does remarkably well, resisting the temptations of both ham and cheese. He’s aided by Todd McKenney, with hair like Stiller’s, whose performance is wonderfully fond and honest.

Mackenzie Dunn, Javon King, Carmel Rodrigues and Sean Johnston in Hairspray. Picture: Jeff Busby

Apart from the cartooned bad guys, the acting is impressively reined in. Rob Mills is wholesome as Corny Collins. Mackenzie Dunn has a thankless role as Tracy’s loyal but dimwitted sidekick, but she tears up the stage with glee when given the chance.

And a special mention to Javon King as Seaweed. Anyone who can sing so smoothly while doing a spine-bending jive deserves a big star on his dressing-room door.

Hairspraymusical.com.au