Before the curtain ascends, a rainbow of colour bedazzles the audience in the form of stage lights which fix their beady eyes out front like a convocation of bald eagles sizing up their prey.

And then ‒ woosh ‒ before you can sing “red and yellow and pink and green” they take to the air and swirl and swoop and soar to the beat of The Corny Collins Show, a teen dance programme fronted by the titular host with a Colgate smile (Jon Tsouras) who along with the show’s bolshy producer, the appropriately named Velma Von Tussle (Gina Murray), ensure that the live transmission will be alright, or rather “all white”, on the night.

For the year is 1962. There are only three channels on tv, two genders devoid of TVs and one superior race. No blacks, no gays, no wonder the world and his or her gender neutral and colourblind partner are up in arms.

As Motormouth Maybelle (Brenda Edwards) says in her gospel-inspired civil rights song I Know Where I’ve Been ‒ the highlight of the show by a split country mile and one of the few numbers to pierce the fourth wall and stir the emotions ‒ “There’s a struggle that we have yet to win.”

And joining her on that struggle is the star of the show Tracy Turnblad (Rebecca Mendoza, making her professional debut), a tubby teenager with backcombed hair and frontloaded boobs who seems destined to follow in the footsteps of her beloved mother Edna (Matt Rixon) in becoming “a simple housewife of indeterminate girth”.

That is until she and her gawky BFF Penny Pingleton (Annalise Liard-Bailey) answer the corny calling of Corny Collins and audition for the role of a backing dancer after one of the “council members” did a Captain Oates and “may be some time”. Nine months, to be precise.

In so doing, they both fall in love ‒ Tracy with the white hunk Link Larkin (Edward Chitticks), Penny with the black punk Seaweed (Layton Williams) ‒ but their biggest adventure is not how to lose their virginity, but how to win over the hearts and minds of the American public by ensuring that the faces they see on TV reflect the binary colours of transmission: black and white.

Based on the 1988 screenplay by John Waters, Hairspray the musical all but swept the board at the 2003 Tony Awards winning an impressive 8 gongs including Best Musical for the show’s composer Marc Shaiman and co-lyricist Scott Wittman.

Now on its fourth UK tour ‒ the first earned Michael Ball an Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical ‒ its popularity and success can be summed up in the title of the closing number: You Can’t Stop The Beat. And given the quality of the performances by the cast, crew and creatives of the current production, which plays at the Edinburgh Playhouse until Saturday before entertaining His Majesty’s in Aberdeen, you won’t be able to stop the beat of your hands clapping in thunderous appreciation.

Against the backdrop of a skeleton set by costume designer Takis and bolstered by the exquisite lighting of Philip Gladwell, the choreography by Drew McOnie (who won an Olivier Award for In The Heights) is given centre stage and the spirited ensemble of dancers cut their moves with the same clinical ease as a spiv or speculator might cut a line of coke. Layton Williams, in particular, a standout.

But so too are the rest of the leads. None more so than Matt Rixon as Edna whose duet with her husband Wilbur (Norman Pace, comedy partner of Gareth Hale) is a comical if surprising delight. Though whether the infectious corpsing was voluntary or not is, like Edna’s girth, “indeterminate”. Either way, they go together like a hoarse, drawn, carnage!

Special mention, too, must goes to Tracey Penn who in a trio of kooky cameos dubbed “female authority figure” milks every teat dry for a belly laugh through a series of physical contortions and vocal gymnastics which are a cross between Mrs Overall and Vinegar Tits out of Prisoner Cell Block H.

Similarly, Gina Murray and Brenda Edwards shine as the warring mothers with the hair-raising voices who by the end of the show bury their differences and share the late Michael Jackson’s vision that: “It don’t matter if you’re black or white.” And, finally, to think that Rebecca Mendoza’s terrific performance as racy Tracy marks her professional debut! To quote from another MJ track: “Just beat it!”

 

Peter Callaghan
Latest posts by Peter Callaghan (see all)