Hairspray stars Leanne Jones and Michael Ball
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The musical adaptation of John Waters’ 1988 film
Hairspray has been a hit on Broadway for five years; now it has finally crossed the Atlantic. The buoyant musical with a ‘60s beat opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre with Michael Ball and Mel Smith as husband and wife and newcomer Leanne Jones as their daughter. Did critics welcome
Hairspray to London?
Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:
Benedict Nightingale of The London Times: “The musical is as delightful as I recall it being on Broadway three years ago and more immediate than it could ever be in the cinema. True, the tale of chubby, chunky Tracy Turnblad, who wears what looks like a lacquered wolverine on her head and thinks she resembles Jackie Kennedy, is unashamedly and, at times, absurdly sentimental. But when Leanne Jones’s Tracy is bounding about the stage exuding all-American resilience and optimism—well, she brought out the inner cheerleader I didn’t know I had. Her world is Baltimore 1962, a place evoked by dresses vaguely indebted to Doris Day and male clothes seemingly designed for aspiring golfers, and her mini-world is the
Corny Collins Television Show, which allows kids to dance and maybe even win the Ultra-Clutch Hairspray Company’s annual Miss Teenage Hairspray Contest. The musical resembles
Grease, then? Yes, but only a bit, for
Hairspray is wittier, funnier, more good-natured and, without being pretentious, more morally and politically aware.”
Michael Billington of The Guardian: “The great thing about John Waters' 1988 cult movie was that you felt every expense had been spared. But even if Hairspray, in the process of being turned into a Broadway musical, has lost some of its glorious tackiness, it retains its generous spirit: this is still a show that not only hymns physical difference but also the basic right to racial integration… At its best, the show gently mocks the naivety of white liberalism. ‘I wish every day were negro day,’ Tracy remarks of TV's monthly obeisance to Baltimore's racial divide. ‘In our house, it is,’ one of Tracy's black chums wanly retorts. At its worst, Hairspray lapses into sentimental piety. Where the show really scores is in its ability to integrate serious issues into a lightweight plot. Jerry Mitchell's joyous choreography is the beating heart of the show. There is something dionysiac about it; and, if the show achieves the ecstasy one looks for in a musical, it comes largely through the dance routines. But the performances, in Jack O'Brien's deliciously fluid production, underline the show's basic benevolence. Leanne Jones is a remarkable Tracy with a talent as high and wide as her scooped-up hair. She puts across Marc Shaiman's numbers with belting brio. And Michael Ball is very funny as her muscular moll of a mum.”
Michael Ball and Mel Smith
as Edna and Wilbur Turnblad
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Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph: “Tense nervous headache? Feeling a little peaky? Hungover? Then for heaven's sake give this show a miss. It will strike you as a terrifying vision of hell. All that noise, my dear, and the people. If you are up for a good time, however, and especially if you are a teenage girl who has just downed a couple of alcopops, it will strike you as heaven on earth. You will laugh, you will scream, you might even shed a sentimental tear or two. I even managed to make quite a night of it myself, and I'm male and middle-aged, as the National Theatre boss, Nicholas Hytner, is fond of pointing out. The mystery about this ebullient and good-hearted show is that it has taken so long to arrive in England, and then only to find a berth at the Shaftesbury, which, after such jaw-droppingly terrible shows as Napoleon, Lautrec, Batboy and others too ghastly to recall, is widely regarded as a graveyard for doomed musicals… Director Jack O'Brien, who alternates raucous musicals like this with superb revivals of Tom Stoppard at the Lincoln Center, ensures that sentiment and laughter are mixed in just the right proportions in a show that offers a sugar-rush of pleasure. Jerry Mitchell's choreography is splendidly effervescent and newcomer Leanne Jones, straight out of drama school and making her professional debut, has exactly the right bubble and bounce as Tracy, moving with a lightness of foot that belies her avoirdupois. The show might be less slick than in New York, but there is no mistaking its big, raucous heart.”
Paul Taylor of The Independent: “I don't know about yours, but my beehive had capsized with excitement even before the curtain had even gone up at the West End opening night of this Broadway musical version of Hairspray. Despite, I might add, furious back-combing and strenuous action with an aerosol in the gents to keep it erect. Normally, I go for the kind of windswept look that would count as a ‘hairdo violation’ at the heroine's Baltimore high school. But I thought a bit of effort barnet-wise was appropriate for a musical that comes boasting eight Tony Awards. Was the show worth it? Yes, yes and again yes. The piece takes us back to the early sixties and a world before mass-obesity and worries about the ozone-layer had had time to make a chubby teenager with a spray-can begin to look like a dubious role model… Powered by elating sixties dance routines that are so infectious they will have to install compulsory seat-belts to prevent the audience from storming the stage, Jack O'Brien's production lays out perfectly the deal this show makes with the punters. It's a deliciously droll double-bluff: a giddy, high-spirited spoof of a youthful protest piece that, with the lightest of touches, manages to be the real thing at the same time… Michael Ball in the Divine role seemed about as excitingly blasphemous a piece of casting as, say, hiring Michael Crawford to play Leigh Bowery. In fact, the fat-suited Ball, who is appreciably better than John Travolta in the recently released movie version of the show, gives one of the warmest, funniest and most oddly touching performances in a musical that I have ever seen… Because it is about more than show business and contrives to be airy and fresh as well as knowing, it leaves The Producers looking a bit thin on top.”
Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard: “Here it is at last, the plump girls' feel-good, romantic comedy of a musical, whose dancing heels take a knockout kick at racist bigots in downtown Baltimore 45 years ago. Hairspray catches the heady, hopeful atmosphere of America teetering on the verge of sixties cultural and political change. Rhythm and blues and Motown, then in their earlier stages, pump out the musical's seductive beat in the hectic dynamism of Jack O'Brien's production with Jerry Mitchell's quicksilver choreography. Agitation for civil rights, soon to gain powerful momentum, begins right here in the city. Sex and love, those vital ingredients without which no musical has legs, do not come in far behind. Hairspray, now in its fifth Broadway year, sent the rare, sweet smell of success wafting through the Shaftesbury last night… Michael Ball deliciously fattened up and dragged down in bland frocks and lurid gowns, majestically slips into the role of the fat, foghorned laundress, Edna Turnblad… Marc Shaiman's urgent score, with clever, often witty lyrics written with Scott Whitman, keeps Hairspray pulsating with musical excitement as well as political anger. And Leanne Jones, as smitten, adolescent lover and Miss Teenage Hairspray, effortlessly commands the stage. She will hearten all actresses who imagine that only the pencil-thin can inherit the lead dressing room.”
Simon Edge of The Daily Express: “Finally the show has arrived in Britain, and this joyous West End version, starring Michael Ball in the role of his life, makes it obvious why it swept the board at the Tony Awards… The stand-out turn is Ball, scarcely recognisable as Tracy’s mother Edna, complete with 54EEE bust. At first Edna is a put-upon laundress. It is only when she joins her daughter and discovers big-haired glamour that Ball turns on the floodlights, knocking everyone else off the stage. Don’t expect effects or spectacle. This is good, honest song-and-dance fun, where the period pastels in the costumes and sets match the relentless upbeat of the lyrics and tunes. ‘Prepare for something big!’ say the posters: ‘Big musicals, big comedy, big hair!’ but the biggest thing about it, apart from Michael Ball’s falsies, is its heart.”
Quentin Letts of The Daily Mail: “London’s panto season effectively got off to an early start last night with the opening of Hairspray. Here is full-squirt, two-dimensional fun, at times almost dementedly full-on. It doesn’t tickle you into mirth. It blooming well shoves you… Newcomer Leanne Jones, who plays Tracy, tonked her first West End song for six last night and didn’t look back. Miss Jones is certainly built for the part—she could be the love child of Phil Vickery and Dawn French—but she works so hard on stage, hurling herself into the dance routines, that I fear for her future. Yes, she could lose too much weight!... Quite what the anti-obesity industry will make of the girth liberation message, Lord knows. But this exuberant, breathless production chokes all resistance, smothering all in its orbit. What else would you expect from a show called Hairspray?”