Brighton Year-Round 2024

Hairspray

Mark Goucher, Matthew Gale and Laurence Myers

Genre: American Theater, Comedy, Historical, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, Theatre

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

John Water’s 1988 film turned-2002 musical by Mark O’Donnell, Thomas Meehan, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman Hairspray is back three years on to fix us. There’s two superb debuts, another discovery, a fine cast. Since 2021 though, everything’s tonally turned a little sharp.: but the packed audience was rapt.

This strangely joyous musical involves Edna Turnblad a pantomime dame mother once taken by Michael Ball (Neil Hurst in fine basso), her podgy daughter, and whippet husband Wilbur, taken by Dermot Canavan – both Hurst and Canavan have their best moment in the second act’s second song ‘You’re timeless to me’ a showstopper, which stops and stops – luckily it’s good.

Much is taken from the film and not all references will strike. Why the heroine’s family are called ‘commies’ by the baddies. Because they’re Jewish and many U.S. communists from 1920s-50s were Jews for idealistic reasons. So it makes perfect sense this family are going to be anti-racist, anti-segregation, pro-rights enemies of prejudice.

That bit of anti-Semitism against the background of segregation recalls Driving Miss Daisy. There’s other jokes, references to Rosa Parks. Much is packed in and if you’re attentive you get the substance. Trouble is it’s not always integrated into fluent storytelling. Given there’s little time in a musical that’s understandable; but there’s time hanging in corners of this 2 hours 30 vehicle: more in one sense would be more.

Daughter Tracey Turnblad is taken by the terrific Alexandra Emmerson-Kirkby making her stage debut with a voice from blow-torch to melt to pathos and sheer joy. She’s superb though the sound design (still Ben Harrison) seems to push many to a just-sharp screech. Local issues will iron out.

Tracey wins a place on a local Baltimore TV contest by taking lessons from Black youth Seaweed (Reece Richards, a very fine dancer and voice) though Tracey too conveniently fancies Solomon Davy’s Link Larkin, local heartthrob; just to prove the big girl can make it sexually, though Larkin’s a drip. Davy does what he can with his part, poignant in the slow-motion arrest at the climax of Act One reaching out to touch his girl. He has growing points to get through before he can stand by the phenomenon of Tracey.

No chance Tracey will love Seaweed, who luckily is launched raunchily at by Tracey’s best friend bespectacled Penny, Freya McMahon also making her stage debut; and who really does ensure she’s the show’s slinkiest dancer in her big transformation. Being the second pair of lovers Penny and Seaweed can afford to be more lusty on stage. Class is tightly choreographed on musicals.

That’s true even though this is based on a true incident, when Black and white youths invaded a segregated TV show in 1963. The ending there wasn’t so happy but it changed things. Here, we have tribulations, multiple arrests, even a price on Tracey’s head when she’s arrested, then escapes. But the governor sees the invasion on his screen.

Pantomime villains are Velma and Amber Von Tussle: Kirsty Sparks (alternate for Joanne Clifton) and Allana Taylor, nicely nasty with faux Baltimore hauteur, though thinness of material means they stay cardboard even when they faint. Sparks is allowed a little more life and seizes it with an impressively camped performance, especially when being carried out horizontal. Taylor’s excellence is in dancing on purpose badly: an under-sung feat.

The two facilitators, apart from Edna, are liberal Corny Collins, taken by Declan Egan, the TV host who welcomes the de-segregated dance invasion, even jail-breaking – for protesting – Velma-targeted Tracey. He’s finally free of Cruella Velma Producer act and her blackmailing the governor with interesting Polaroids.

And then there’s Motormouth Maybette.

This was famously co-director Brenda Edwards’ part in 2021, and her handpicked successor Michelle Ndegwa has to wait before she’s given her big number, but discovery Ndegwa establishes presences in all her scenes. In her great rallying cry to her Black and white proteges, Ndegwa suddenly opens up ‘I Know Where I’ve Been’ and we’re in a different musical terraced with feeling, history struggle, emotional power and more than a tinge of greatness.

Then there’s Maybette’s daughter little Inez, engaging and lithe in Katlo’s rendering, who’s allowed sallies of wit and fire. A telling moment is Penny’s escaping, eloping with Seaweed just as Tracey and Link make it over from prison. “She’ll kill me” wails Penny of her horrible bondage-prone mother. “No, she’ll kill him” Inez points to her brother Seaweed.

Emily Ann Potter takes the horrible mother and jailor role and Stuart Hickey the male equivalent. The three Dynamites are particularly burnished singers too – Grace Anyiam (Shayna), Vanessa Dumatry (Judine), Sasha Monique (Kamillah). Issie Wilman takes Lou-Ann, whose nine months away ensures a space has to be filled. There’s brief names plus ensemble work from a uniformly excellent cast: Rebecca French (Tammy), Nina Bell (Brenda), Olly Manley (Brad, the mean show-off), Jacob Smith (IQ), Ben Anderson (Fender, another meaner show-off), Jaiden Lodge (Duane), Marcellus Hill (Thad), Shemar Jarrett (Gilbert), with Ryan Appiah-Sarpong (Assistant Dance Captain), and Swings Duncan Burt, Shaniquah Notice-Morris, Joseph Bristow.

Director Paul Kerryson keeps energy and pace, Choreographer Drew McOnie produces a period feel about to break out of it though locally it was disarticulated and sprawling in places. It should pick up. The end naturally is his set-piece. Musical Supervisor Ben Atkinson and Director Richard Atkinson’s orchestra are first-rate, set and costume Design are taken by Takis. The vertical bed Tracey wakes up in promises more memorable set moments that occasionally arrive. Stage left a house external with flashing windows and a pull-away (now blank) interior for the heroine’s family. Stage left there’s a few more of these, though it’s a spartan set.

There’s more use this time of David Callanan’s video as projection. A giant hairspray container tops it off. Suits are all colours of the LSD rainbow, with the exception of Tracey always dressing below the sham glitz elsewhere; and the defiance of the Black community with its break-out gear.

Philip Gladwell – well-known as a lighting designer – deploys a couple of set pieces to show what he can do, but given the overall heft – live orchestra and number of performers – there’s a feel in set/costume design and lighting this is a bit like a musical on a budget, which it can’t be.

The big number opening and second half with three numbers including finale is the best thing, some numbers second-or-third-order and unmemorable. Even “Mum I’m a big girl now” doesn’t stick. The singing is fine but this time there’s occasional sharpness and shrillness. This should settle. Certainly ensemble are joyous and Kerryson’s direction again crisp.

That final number ‘You Can’t Stop the Beat’ is nailingly memorable and McOnie too rises to the challenge of an often small stage as this one, to allow the energy to get across, though it seems even more challenged than last time. It’s an exhilarating feel-good yes to everything, that rivers will flow. If only. But 1962 was on the cusp of huge change still unfolding before us on later TV screens than the Corny Collins show. You wonder what life, rather than the musical, will do with some of these characters.

Hairspray has a heart, though like the 2009 film The Help, there’s a Liberal anxiety to feel better about racism, whilst somehow keeping its present injustices at bay. It’s not the heroine who lands slinky Seaweed. I suppose that a white girl, even if the second-fiddle best-friend manages it, is something in the right direction.

This tour wants a little in production values; vocally several performers aren’t ideally clear. But you can’t fault the mostly superb cast: singing, dancing, with thrilling orchestral contribution. Emmerson-Kirby and Ndegwa are stand-outs, but several come close: like dancers Richards, and McMahon like Emmerson-Kirby making her debut. Otherwise a memorable ensemble, in an intermittently memorable musical.

Director Paul Kerryson and Brenda Edwards, Choreographer Drew McOnie, The Band led by Richard Atkinson, Musical Supervisor Ben Atkinson, Set and Costume Designer Takis, Lighting Philip Gladwell, Sound Designer Ben Harrison, Production Design George Reeve

Associate Choreographer Lindsay McAllister, Wigs, Hair & Make-up Designer craig Forrest-Thomas, Wig Supervisor Hannah McGregor, Costumer Supervisor Jennie Quirk, Video Associate David Callanan. Till October 5^th and touring

Published October 1, 2024October 1, 2024 by Simon Jenner