FringeReview UK 2025
Cry-Baby
Arcola Theatre, Studio 1
Genre: American Theater, Costume, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, Theatre
Venue: Arcola Theatre, Dalston
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Hairspray’s team of Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan – with songs this time by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger – take the next John Waters film two years after the 1988 Hairspray – itself turned into the evergreen 2002 musical. Cry-Baby following five years later is revived at the Arcola, directed by its artistic director Mehmet Ergen till April 12th.
Easily the most joyous musical we’ll see this side midsummer, Cry-Baby in this production blazes fit to set another fire in Dalston.
A cult classic, Ergen and his team have blown its doors off and this riot of a musical can break out here too.
Review
Baltimore, exclusive musical clubs and wrongful imprisonment of young people? Sounds like Hairspray, and for good reason. The same team of Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan – with songs this time by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger – take the next John Waters film two years after the 1988 Hairspray – itself turned into the evergreen 2002 musical. Cry-Baby following five years later is revived at the Arcola, directed by its artistic director Mehmet Ergen till April 12th.
Easily the most joyous musical we’ll see this side midsummer, Cry-Baby in this production blazes fit to set another fire in Dalston. We’ll come back to arson later. Though darker, its plot is thinner than Hairspray, inset with two kinds of racism – there’s subtexts of anti-Semitism suffered by Tracy Turnblad. Rebellion in Cry-Baby isn’t race-driven but long shadows of class-war make up for a slightly static plotline, over two hours fifteen minutes. Happily Chris Whittaker’s choreography blows that away and there’s no drop in energy or storytelling. Reduced on revivals to fit a smaller band, it thrives in this intimacy.
Indeed in Studio 1’s space there’s nowhere to hide, bar the band. Designer Robert Innes Hopkins crafts a simple black dance floor with removable props and backdrop-painted giant flag, while Defne Özdogan’s riotous costumes play with clichés, hinting at post 1950s styles dipped with hippydom. The band up on the platform (James Green, Lucy Gowen, Nadine Lee, Kaz Hamilton) are as punchy as Grimeborn opera bands playing this space in summer – Matt Giles’ sound ensures everything’s crisp, loud but never overloud. Lit like summer and smoke by David Howe, you believe it’s 70 in the shade. It is.
Javerbaum and Schlesinger are witty, often memorable song-writers: indeed wit in these lyrics pushes the song-writing beyond most of the songs in Hairspray. Set in 1954 eight years before Hairspray, Cry-Baby’s the name of Wade Walker (Adam Davidson ringing tenor kerned with vulnerability), from the wrong side of the town and leads his class misfit, the Drapes, full of emerging rock n’roll. There’s a hint of West Side Story with its teeth pulled: neither the gangs or music are anything like as dangerous – though the women Drapes do their best.
And there’s stigma hovering: Cry-Baby’s pacifists parents were wrongly sent to the electric chair for arson. But he’s grown up a charismatic leader, and spies fellow-orphan Allison Vernon-Williams (radiant, ardent Lulu-Mae Pears), a bowed-up, brought-up rich girl. Their attraction’s obviously immediate, to the rage of Allison’s “Square” boyfriend, Baldwin (Elliot Allinson, edging bad turns with aplomb), and her grandmother Cordelia Vernon-Williams. Shirley Jameson gets one superb moment and revealing backstory, marking her curious transition with “Did Something Wrong Once” (delicious in its escalatory admission) and moments with authority-figure Paul Kemble’s Judge, with his one solo spot.
They’re not happy. And both hold a secret: indeed Baldwin’s as like his parents as Cry-Baby. Rivalries intensify, there’s malign plots, notably from Baldwin and poor “mad” Lenora Frigid with her crush on Cry-Baby. Eleanor Walsh stunningly characterises kooky swoops and is showstopping in ‘Screw Loose’. One way or another… heartbreak follows for several at once; forbidden love and teen rebellion reel out from the Drapes as the Whiffles look on and… wibble.
The Whiffles with their numbers are deliciously guyed and harmonic heaven when we want hell to break loose: JR Ballantyne, Joe Grundy, Ryan Heenan deserve as much of a shout in such numbers as ‘Squeaky Clean’, ‘Nifty Country’ and ‘This Amazing Offer’ as their looser colleagues the Drapes. Indeed nihilistic glee advertising conformity and nuclear bomb-shelters (for the club only) are thicker here than Hairspray’s , and there’s more of Waters’ bite here too.
Chad Saint-Louis as Dupree owner of the Turkey club and Cry-Baby’s friend, enjoys a glorious baritone, and the most operatic signing in the show. Though only one partial solo in “Jailyard Jubilee” his singing is a show anchor. Kingsley Morton’s Mona Malnorowski, raucous with her switchblade, Jazzy Phoenix’s memorable, sassy Pepper Walker flaunting pregnancy (someone else does, but this is real), and India Chadwick’s outrageous dancer Wanda Woodward are given more than the other Drapes: but Laura Buhagiar, Omer Cem Coltu ,Ellie Grace-Cousins and Michael Kholwadia make watching as close-up as this in Studio 1 a delight. You’re never more than feet away from them; the movement’s infectiously blocked to spill over – even between seats.
Indeed Pears’ first song after “The Anti-Polio Picnic” ensemble is (naturally) “I’m Infected” and Davidson’s “Girl, Can I Kiss You with Tongue” brings the house down. They’re infectiously matched too and with solos mainly in the first Act like “Baby Baby Baby” the emphasis is on ensemble variation.
For instance “Misery” taken up by each of the leads is a signature of how this musical works, as with “Jailyard Jubilee”, “A Little Upset”, and “Nothing Bad”. Whilst Davidson gets one roe solo “Do That Again” (not the most memorable) it’s “Nothing Bad” with its superbly cynical take on the dawn everyone thinks 1954 is a harbinger of that the audience goes tapping out to.
Slightly crazed and in some ways sillier than Hairspray, it’s more subversive, wittier, often more memorable: and characters like Lenora remain vaguely unappeased, even if this ghost promises to get laid at the end. A cult classic, Ergen and his team have blown its doors off and this riot of a musical can break out here too.
Associate Designer & Costume Supervisor Defne Özdogan, Production Manager Jo Palmer, CSM Evelin Thomas, ASM Jasmine Smith, Production Electrician Matthew ‘Lux’ Swithinbank, LX Programmer Freddy Sherwood, Sound No. 1 Patrick O’Sullivan, Casting Director Jane Deitch, Assistant Directors Xinxi Du & Ryan Heenan, Costume Assistant Rish Rajput, Artwork Design Richard Scarborough, Rehearsal Production & Cover Photography Charlie Flint Merchandise Designer Nishat Ahmed (letterstojuly)
