blaxx said: "Just like Young Frankenstein after Producers, it would have never lived up to Hairspray's hype.
I didn't hate it as much as others did, but let's remember this was a stacked season of great new musicals and astonishing revivals.
I do wonder why you think the book was better than Hairspray's - it was not at all. In fact, you could hear crickets during the painfully long and calculated text scenes, which was opposite to the John Water's raw and quirky film. The songs were much better, but I remember the punch of the joke to come so early that it was hard to find the musical numbers witty after a while.
Maybe one day this will fare better in an unpretentious and in-your-face Off Broadway production."
I think it may perhaps come from a sense of being burned out by Hairspray. When every high school and community theatre in the world has done it, I feel like I'm missing something that made it special when it first opened. You have a source material that comes from a director known for raunchy, off-beat humor, and the musical adaptation has always felt like this safe, cookie-cutter crowd-pleaser that betrays the original spirit of John Waters' work.
Cry-Baby on the other hand has more edgy humor, self-aware music, and a much more realized identity. When the Drapes mock the Squares in this musical, it feels like they're mocking the safe status-quo that Hairspray is in the thick of.
