Hairspray – Review – Sheffield Lyceum Theatre
By Clare Jenkins, October 2024
I knew I should have taken earplugs. From its opening bars, Hairspray is turbocharged and deafeningly loud, the volume turned up to 11 and staying there for the whole two and a half hours.
With its cast of swing-dress-and-bobby-socks girls and slickly crooning boys, the show is as American as Thanksgiving turkey. It’s also as toothachingly sweet as bubble-gum, as colourful as a box of candy, as fluffy as candyfloss – and obviously as addictive, given last night’s fan-base full house and standing ovation at the end.
And, nestled within all the sense-assaulting schmaltz, there’s a sugar-coated message about racial harmony that makes Uncle Tom’s Cabin seem like an academic thesis.
Set in Baltimore in the 1960s, Hairspray started life as a 1988 film by John Waters, featuring drag artist Divine as well as Sonny (of ‘and Cher’) Bono and Debbie Harry. Adapted into a multi-award-winning musical in 2002 by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, it was remade as a film in 2007, starring John Travolta and Michelle Pfeiffer.
“Merciless”
In this touring production, Tracy Turnblad (ball of energy Katie Brace, in a black beehive wig that’s more Minnie Mouse than Martha and the Vandellas) is the plus-size schoolgirl captivated by the Corny Collins teen show on local TV. Along with her best friend Penny Pingelton (an ear-piercing Freya McMahon), she’s hyper-desperate to appear on it. At the audition, however, she’s fat-shamed by merciless producer Velma Von Tussle (Joanne Clifton) but catches the eye of high school smoothie Link Larkin (Olly Manley, channelling his inner Elvis) and the show’s host, Corny Collins himself (a wonderfully watchable Declan Egan).
Invited to join the onscreen dancers, Tracy proves a big hit with viewers, but a miss with her teachers, who put her in special education classes. Most of the other students there are black, and Tracy soon learns about racial segregation and racist attitudes. Penny’s mother, for instance, is horrified by the idea of her daughter having a black boyfriend (a street-cool Shemar Jarrett). Yet Tracy’s own parents Edna and Wilbur are the essence of working-class tolerance, her with her perpetual ironing, him with his failing joke shop.
As the big-bosomed, wide-girthed Edna, Neil Hurst steals every scene he’s in, while Dermot Canavan is the perfect foil. Together they’re the very essence of both a 1950s vaudeville act and a Panto Dame duo – especially with their final duet, ‘You’re Timeless To Me’.
“Explosive”
Sasha Monique is magnificent as Motormouth Maybelle, the R&B record producer who hosts the monthly ‘Negro Day’ on the Corny Collins show, the only day black dancers are allowed onscreen. Under her influence, Tracy and her newfound friends protest against prejudice outside the TV studio. Despite a spell in prison, the result, of course, is racial unity with romance attached. And Monique, like Hurst, provides some of the few calm moments of reflection.
Thanks to Jack O’Brien’s direction and Drew McOnie’s choreography, the energy is effervescent, not to say exhausting. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s songs – among them, ‘Momma You’re a Big Girl Now’, ‘It’s a Man’s World’ and ‘Welcome to the 60s’ – very much conjure up the pre-Beatles era of black girl groups, rhythm and blues and the odd gospel number. As does Takis’s psychedelic set design.
However, because the volume is so explosive, the words – of both songs and script – sometimes struggle (and fail) to be heard. As a result, some of the jokes fall flat, and some of the cast sound as intelligible as Donald Duck. There’s a similarly cartoonish lack of subtlety in the characterisation, with little in the way of light and dark, high and low. But hey, as the rousing final song says, you can’t stop the beat. Just take ear protectors.
‘Hairspray’ is at Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre until Saturday, then on tour, including York Grand Opera House from 28th Oct to 2nd Nov
images: Ellie Kurtz
