Book: Mark O'Donnell & Thomas Meehan; Score: Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman. At: Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace. Tickets: 630-530-0111 or www.drurylaneoakbrook.com; $35-$46. Runs through: June 17
When Drury Lane Theatre produced the Chicago-area regional theater premiere of Spamalot starting in late 2010, one criticism I leveled at the production was that it hewed so closely to Mike Nichols' original 2005 Broadway staging instead of offering its own distinct take on the material. So now that Drury Lane is tackling the 2002 hit Broadway musical Hairspray, I really shouldn't criticize its new approach for not living up to the fluidity of the original staging.
Yet when you spot the modern-day stagehands moving scenery on and off in director/choreographer Tammy Mader's Hairspray for Drury Lane, it does take you out of the colorful 1960s desegregationist onstage fantasy world. Mader and set designer Marcus Stephens' new approach to Hairspray with multiple levels and pop out scenery is an interesting approach, but in execution it's rather halting to the flow.
But other than this staging quibble, Drury Lane definitely delivers a handsome Hairspray that should please both die-hard fans and newcomers alike. Hairspray dazzles with its infectiously catchy 1960s-styled score by gay songwriting duo Scott Wittman and Mark Shaiman, plus it still retains much of the irreverent and subversive humor of out director John Waters' surprisingly family-friendly 1988 film of the same name.
As the plus-sized heroine Tracy Turnblad, Lillian Castillo is a bundle of malice-free joy who carries the show to its happy conclusion by helping to integrate the Baltimore-based teenage dance TV program The Corny Collins Show. (Too bad the real-life The Buddy Deane Show that inspired Waters' Hairspray was cancelled when white parents refused to let their kids dance on a desegregated show.)
As Tracy's oversized mother, Michael Aaron Lindner certainly gets plenty of laughs playing things basically straight as the agoraphobic housewife Edna Turnblad, who's married to the jokester Wilbur (a zippy Tim Kazurinsky). Lindner's drag appearance certainly makes you think of the late Divine, who originated the film role, although a touch of comic winking to the audience might have been welcome.
The rest of the cast is also top-notch, with appropriately villainous turns by the respectively bullying and bigoted Amber and Velma Von Tussle of Holly Laurent and Keely Vasquez, and a dreamy take on the heartthrob Link Larkin by Erik Altemus. Felicia Fields also milks as much humor as she can out of the dusky voiced DJ Mortormouth Maybelle, who is mother to the supremely confident Little Inez of Joshlyn Lomax.
The secondary romantic coupling of the characters Seaweed J. Stubbs and Penny Pingleton is also loads of fun thanks to the elastically danced turn of Jon-Michael Reese and the scatterbrained performance of Rebecca Pink. Though Drury Lane's Hairspray won't obliterate treasured memories of the original staging, it's effective enough on its own terms.