Skylight’s ‘Hairspray’ is unstoppable dance party
As competing visions of America go, I’ll take the buoyant “Hairspray” over any political commercial I saw during the past year:
Black and white teens dance together, big people are loved for who they are, and the villains surrender to the beat.
Skylight Music Theatre’s exciting new production of the musical derived from John Waters’ 1988 film has both body and bounce. In many respects, it’s a perfect Skylight show. It winks at genre conventions while also enthusiastically embracing them, and it has tailormade roles for familiar local performers, such as Doug Clemons as the slick TV dance show host.
So much about “Hairspray” depends on casting. As Tracy Turnblad, the plus-size teen who sparks a campaign to integrate a Baltimore TV dance show, Maisie Rose is a joy. I loved watching her facial expressions as she reacted to other characters. Rose shows us that Tracy’s success comes not only from her unstoppable enthusiasm but also how closely she watches others and how quickly she learns a new dance.
Typical of this show’s sly cultural commentary, white Tracy learned the dance that wins her a spot on the show from black teen Seaweed (Gilbert Domally) while they both were in detention. Tracy, of course, gives Seaweed his props.
One of this production’s showstoppers is “You’re Timeless to Me,” the love duet between Tracy’s mom Edna (Tommy Novak in drag) and dad Wilbur (David Flores). The towering Novak and diminutive Flores may be mismatched in size, but you’ll never see a sweeter pair make goo-goo eyes at each other on stage.
The romance between the smooth Seaweed and Tracy’s awkward and overprotected white best friend Penny (the excellent Ann Delaney) is the show’s truly subversive element, with Waters and his musical theater adapters daring to suggest a black teen boy and white teen girl could fall sweetly in love!
As Seaweed’s mom, the DJ Motormouth Maybelle, Bethany Thomas commands the stage as both actor and singer. To think that just two weeks ago Thomas was singing Patsy Cline and Maria Callas in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s “Songs for Nobodies.” Can’t Wisconsin come up with some kind of grant to keep Thomas here year-round?
Director Lili-Anne Brown has beautifully integrated a cast of 17 young performers with the adult actors in this show. Fittingly, the audience Saturday night adored Terynn Erby-Walker as Little Inez, Seaweed’s bright-eyed younger sister. The costumes designed by Michael Bottari and Ronald Case, from Edna’s fabulous gowns to the earth-toned clothes of the North Avenue kids, are a feast of color.
And of course you can’t stop the beat of early ’60s rock and R&B; the show’s six-member band sounds much bigger.
Both the musical “Hairspray” and the 2007 movie derived from it smooth out some of Waters’ deliberately rough edges. But I was pleased to see this production’s nods to Waters himself, including the image of a pink flamingo on the wall in the Turnblad home. Do be sure to notice what Tracy is playing with when she’s in her prison cell.