The nicest kids in town are alright: ‘Hairspray’ via Uptown Music Theater Highland Park
The Company.
Even in troubled times, I am convinced that not even the most flat-footed production of “Hairspray” could undermine its off-beat optimism, much less the likes of “Good Morning, Baltimore” and “You Can’t Stop the Beat,” surely among the surefire bangers Broadway has put out in the last twentysome years.
Happily, Uptown Music Theater’s production is not flat-footed in the least—as the kids say, it understands the assignment and passes with flying colors.
In making the source film—what was his first mainstream-ish film—John Waters may have traded in vinegar for citrus, but his love for the underdog endures, to say nothing of his cocked eye at conformity and the people who cling to it. To them, he doesn’t so much say “Resistance is futile,” but, rather appropriately for this Sixties-set tale, “Resistance is kind of a drag, man.”
In brief, tone is everything: enough winking irony to undermine the so-called innocence of a so-called simpler time, but enough earnestness so that the stakes are very real even within an artificial Broadway musical environment where everything is neatly set up and paid off. Grace Hall as Tracy Turnblad,also leans into the bobby-soxer melodrama of the part winningly enough: if she can’t make it onto Baltimore’s “Corny Collins Show” (think “American Bandstand”), she’ll just die. That is, at least until she sees there are greater things at stake when her wish to see the show allow on both Black and white teens alike encounters resistance.
Hall is also an able straight woman for the even larger-than-life supporting cast around her particularly the mothers: Emma Jean Eastlund as the deliciously villainous pro-segregationist studio producer; Sharon Miles as the hip deejay around whom the pro-integration plot coalesces (and blessed with the socko eleven-o’-clock number “I Know Where I’ve Been,” which prompted a few mid-show standing ovations from those not pinned to the backs of their seats); and Scott Spector, who fills out Edna Turnblad’s homemaker heels quite well, and has a rasp that, I think, somehow goes lower than Harvey Fierstein’s.
Design is delightfully faux-Googie; music direction by Aaron Kaplan digs into Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s Phil Spector-esque pastiche with gusto; and, heck, even the bad guys are dancing along by the end. Call it optimism; call it a fairy tale; but that Baltimore sound will follow you well beyond the parking lot.
Hairspray runs through Aug. 3 at 433 Vine Ave, Highland Park, IL. For tickets or more information, please visit uptownhp.org.
For more reviews on this or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.