CityLife

Hairspray (On Tour)

Hairspray

Hairspray
Opera House
July 14, 2010

The bigger your girth, the more you are worth. Big girls take heart. The leading ladies in Hairspray have lots of girth - and are full of heart.

Foremost among them is Edna Turnblad, famously played by Michael Ball with triple E boobs. Let’s get that out of the way straightaway - he is terrific. He doesn’t overplay it or camp it up – he’s a bonny mum who does the laundry until she’s brought out of her shell by her wannabe TV dancer daughter Tracy, another big girl, zestfully played by Laurie Scarth. 

And third in line is the larger-than-life Motormouth Maybella, explosively realised - especially in her final show-stopping gospel-like number I Know Where I’ve Been - by Sandra Marvin.

We’ve had to wait a long time for the show to reach us. After all, John Waters film on which it is based is more than 20 years old now and deals with racial segregation issues rife in Baltimore nearly 50 years ago.

For all the fun and froth and vitality of the show, it jars with me that such a heart-rending, agonising subject should come glossily wrapped. Even today, if you stray onto the wrong side of the tracks in Baltimore you’re likely to be politely re-directed by the cops.

But Waters based his version on an actual local TV show, which first featured mixed-race dancers in 1963 (and was taken off air in 1964). That was a teen dance show, as is The Corny Collins Show in Hairspray, where the TV talent competition for Miss Teenage Hairspray 1962 seems set up for the producer’s dizzy blonde daughter rather than Edna’s tubby, bubbly Tracy. You can guess what happens.

The show does get across the feelings of many of the kids themselves, keen to mix and dance with one another. They venture into the welcoming black ghetto in such numbers that someone quips, “If we get any more white people in here, it’ll be a suburb.” And even the mums are won over.

This isn’t a lavish show, but it is cleverly staged (director Jack O’Brien) and Edna, Tracy and Maybella have nice frocks. The dancing is dazzling – sharp, synchronised and sizzling (choreographer Jerry Mitchell). Marc Shaiman’s music is redolent of the period (shades of Grease and High School Musical), although there are few memorable tunes or songs.

But the undoubted highlight of the whole enjoyable evening is the wry love-duet Timeless to Me, adroitly performed by Edna and her dotty doting husband Wilbur, amusingly played by Nigel Planer. The show’s worth seeing for that alone

Until 31 July. Tickets £22 to £44. Ticketmaster 0844 847 2295. www.palaceandoperahouse.org.uk.