HAIRSPRAY
HAIRSPRAY, Lyric Theatre Star City, June 24-to whenever, 2011. Photos by Jeff Busby.
The TV console that frames the action of David Atkins’ ingenious staging of Hairspray is a beautiful thing. Although suggested only by neon it echoes the kind of expensive cabinet-ware your mother longed for and then, having saved up and purchased, lovingly polished with O-Cedar, dusted the screen and gold fabric-covered speakers with a feather duster and wiped carefully around the little metal logo “Solid State”. Whatever did that mean? All the best TVs and radiograms were “solid state” and they were extremely solid.
That’s the weird thing about Hairspray the musical –it’s as ephemeral as a pop video and operates in a world constructed of giant LED screens and projections that are so reminiscent of Hanna-Barbera cartoons they make you smile in anticipation. Yet it beautifully conveys the stolid state of white music, white life and white America in the few years between the late 1950s and mid-60s. It straddles the last gasp of such anodyne delights as How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? and anything by the Four Freshmen, to the social explosion of civil rights and musical muscle when the recently invented “teenager” tuned in and turned on to race music – the blues and R&B.
Meanwhile, the Cold War raged and WW2 was still a grim and all too recent memory for millions, so schoolkids solemnly watched civil defence instruction films such as the classic Duck and Cover (survive a nuclear blast behind the kitchen table) and their parents grimly hung on to a brand of social conservatism so dreary that it’s now known as “white picket fence” – and yes, John Howard hung on to it a whole long longer and harder than most. And in suburban Baltimore, young Tracy Turnblad is being drawn into her own personal war. She’s “pleasantly plump”, she’s bullied at school and she’s beginning to suspect there’s something wrong with the concept of Negro Day when, as one of her new black friends wryly notes, every day is White Day.
This is the background to what is otherwise a joyous, exuberant paean to three-minute pop songs, bouffant hair-dos, can-can petticoats and white socks. And that’s Hairspray the musical – not the original inspiration: John Waters' movie of 1988, nor the John Travolta vehicle of 2007 – which may disconcert or disappoint some of their fans. But it won’t disappoint anyone approaching it afresh and with a deep desire to see Tracy achieve her ambition of dancing on the Corny Collins Show – the TV show for “the nicest kids in town”. Unfortunately for Tracy, the show is produced by the lemon-lipped glamour puss Velma Von Tussle who is determined that her own daughter, the obnoxious Amber, will be the star of the show.
Tracy is a thoroughly decent and well adjusted girl, despite her obstacles, and it’s obvious from the outset that this is largely (no pun intended) due to her parents, the outsize Edna and her joke shop owning husband Wilbur. Like her daughter, Edna had dreams too, but instead she washes and irons other people’s clothes while dreaming of designing her own; in the form of Trevor Ashley she’s also the unlikely, outrageous heart of the show. In hair rollers and housedress, Ashley’s Edna is both poignant and funny and with Grant Piro as her skinny, adoring hubby, is one of the memorable visual motifs of the show. They are surrounded and backed up by a wondrous all-singing, all-dancing, non-stop high-octane company. Among its stars are Tevin Campbell, who reprises his Broadway role of Seaweed J Stubbs, Jack Chambers as his white counterpart Link Larkin; Cle Morgan as the showstopping mama, Motormouth Maybelle, Esther Hannaford as Tracy’s best friend, the geeky Penny Pingleton; and Scott Irwin as Corny Collins, the TV host with klieg light teeth.
Nevertheless, Hairspray flies or falls on the power and charm of Tracy and the show has given birth to a new musical theatre star in casting 23-year-old Jaz Flowers in the role. She is simply tremendous as she channels the spirits of Annette Funicello and Connie Francis despite being burdened by the world’s biggest bouffant and surrounded by more colour and movement and talent than anyone should have to try to outshine.
It’s a tribute to the cast that the technical genius of the cartoon setting doesn’t overshadow the humans on stage as they power through choreographer Jason Coleman’s witty homage to 60s dances – god, the Madison was a silly thing! It also frees them to do their stuff unencumbered by scene changes or even very much scenery – because everything, be it streetscape, TV studio or even a civil rights demo is projected behind them with dazzling fluidity and speed and ironically, despite the riot of colour, is unobtrusive. Tributes too, therefore to production designer Eamon D’Arcy, lighting designer Trudy Dalgliesh, wig and costume designer Janet Hine and sound designer Michael Waters and the digital wizards Robbie Klaesi, Tracey Taylor, Frantz Kantor and Sydney company Digital Pulse.
Hairspray arrives in Sydney humming and smooth as a Ferrari after its out-of-town try out in Melbourne. It’s a feel-good show for all ages that also packs a surprising punch and message of tolerance and humanity – and the life-changing properties of the teasing comb. David Atkins' vision is a wacky and beautiful thing.
