London Hairspray Reviews

[kec]

Posted: 10/30/07 at 9:59pm

From the Times Online:

"As I’ve battled through its tiny, gridlocked foyer into the cavernous auditorium below, I have often wondered if the Shaftesbury Theatre has a death-wish; but seldom more than last night. Whoever decided to bring the stage version of the film Hairspray to London immediately after its remake has come bouncing on to British screens, gaining rave reviews and, no doubt, audiences for whom one viewing is enough?

Well, if the impresarios have goofed, they’ve goofed happily, for the musical is as delightful as I recall it being on Broadway three years ago and more immediate than it could ever be in the cinema. True, the tale of chubby, chunky Tracy Turnblad, who wears what looks like a lacquered wolverine on her head and thinks she resembles Jackie Kennedy, is unashamedly and, at times, absurdly sentimental. But when Leanne Jones’s Tracy is bounding about the stage exuding all-American resilience and optimism — well, she brought out the inner cheerleader I didn’t know I had."
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"But anyone would forgive the show’s wishfulness, given the ebullience of Marc Shaiman’s rock, which might have been written for and delivered by Elvis himself, and the quality of Jack O’Brien’s cast, which matches its Broadway counterpart for energy."




Times Online

[kec]

Posted: 10/30/07 at 10:04pm

The Daily Telegraph:

"Tense nervous headache? Feeling a little peaky? Hungover? Then for heaven's sake give this show a miss. It will strike you as a terrifying vision of hell. All that noise, my dear, and the people.


Spectacular: Leanne Jones as Tracy Turnblad and Michael Ball as her mother
If you are up for a good time, however, and especially if you are a teenage girl who has just downed a couple of alcopops, it will strike you as heaven on earth. You will laugh, you will scream, you might even shed a sentimental tear or two. I even managed to make quite a night of it myself, and I'm male and middle-aged, as the National Theatre boss, Nicholas Hytner, is fond of pointing out.

The mystery about this ebullient and good-hearted show is that it has taken so long to arrive in England, and then only to find a berth at the Shaftesbury, which, after such jaw-droppingly terrible shows as Napoleon, Lautrec, Batboy and others too ghastly to recall, is widely regarded as a graveyard for doomed musicals."

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"Mercifully, the show never descends into worthiness. Not that it could, with its preposterous hairstyles, kitsch, retina-bruising designs and a superb pop score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, which gloriously captures the sounds of pop before the arrival of the Beatles – girl groups, rock and roll, rhythm and blues and an amazing gospel number that almost lifts the roof off the theatre.

There's even a delightful vaudevillian routine for Michael Ball, who plays Tracy's corpulent mum in spectacular big-bosomed drag and looks as if he's having the time of his life, and Mel Smith as her devoted, joke-shop-owning husband."

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"Director Jack O'Brien, who alternates raucous musicals like this with superb revivals of Tom Stoppard at the Lincoln Centre, ensures that sentiment and laughter are mixed in just the right proportions in a show that offers a sugar-rush of pleasure.

Jerry Mitchell's choreography is splendidly effervescent and newcomer Leanne Jones, straight out of drama school and making her professional debut, has exactly the right bubble and bounce as Tracy, moving with a lightness of foot that belies her avoirdupois."




Hairspray: Big Hair, Big Heart, Big Fun

[kec]

Posted: 10/30/07 at 11:12pm

From the Daily Mail:

"London's panto season effectively got off to an early start last night with the opening of Hairspray.

Here is full-squirt, two-dimensional fun, at times almost dementedly full-on.

It doesn't tickle you into mirth. It blooming well shoves you."

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"Sitting in row C of the stalls last night, being assailed full blast by a hot-pumping Mama called Johnnie Fiori, was to encounter the sort of G-forces endured by America's earliest trainee astronauts.

Miss Fiori has a Harley Davidson voice - without the silencer."
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"Newcomer Leanne Jones, who plays Tracy, tonked her first West End song for six last night and didn't look back.

Miss Jones is certainly built for the part - she could be the love child of Phil Vickery and Dawn French - but she works so hard on stage, hurling herself into the dance routines, that I fear for her future.

Yes, she could lose too much weight!"





Hairspray: First Night Review

[shesamarshmallow]

Posted: 10/30/07 at 11:30pm

British reviewers are so cryptic!

[mateo]

Posted: 10/30/07 at 11:32pm

haha I was thinking the same thing.

"Well do you like it or not!?"

[kec]

Posted: 10/30/07 at 11:36pm

I have to confess the Dail Mail one has me puzzled. The other two, at least, make their positive opinion more clear.

[kec]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 6:54am

Check out this video with comments from cast and celebrities in the audience alike...
Hairspray Opening Night Video

[WickedBoy2]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 7:00am

The daily mail critic is also the political critic for the same paper! Go figure!

[kec]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 7:02am

So Wicked Boy -- did he like the show or not?!

[WickedBoy2]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 7:11am

Im reading a 'yes' into what he's saying! He's the leat popular critic in London at the moment.

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 7:35am

OK, Leanne Jones is as cute as a freaking button!

And don't get me started on that Link. Ben James-Ellis. I'm in love.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 7:36am

O course he did

All the reviews so far have been positive to flat out Raves

ITS A HIT PEOPLE

And as i said on the other board can we just say YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH to Leanne Jones, For those of you who dont know, leanne has been posting on the west end board for years and we were all so proud of her when she got the part

[jo]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 8:03am

Michael Coveney, theatre critic, writes for the WOS site --

http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8821193825547&title=Hairspray


"This is indeed a rare thing: a totally daffy and delightful musical where the serious issues are as good for you as a big stick of pink candyfloss."

[kec]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 8:29am

The Independent:

"I don't know about yours, but my beehive had capsized with excitement even before the curtain had even gone up at the West End opening night of this Broadway musical version of Hairspray. Despite, I might add, furious back-combing and strenuous action with an aerosol in the gents to keep it erect. Normally, I go for the kind of windswept look that would count as a "hairdo violation" at the heroine's Baltimore High School. But I thought a bit of effort barnet-wise was appropriate for a musical that comes boasting eight Tony Awards. Was the show worth it?

Yes, yes and again yes. The piece takes us back to the early Sixties and a world before mass-obesity and worries about the ozone-layer had had time to make a chubby teenager with a spray-can begin to look like a dubious role model. So was this an innocent time in the Land of the Free? Not for blacks, it wasn't. Homing in on the Corny Collins television show, where teenagers try out trendy new dances, Hairspray exposes the segregation that relegated black kids to one "Negro Day" a month with Corny – or rather does until our portly 16-year-old heroine, Tracy Turnblad (an adorably starry-eyed and idealistic Leanne Jones) proves that she can not only out-Mash-Potato all the slim richer white kids but put an end to discrimination, too."

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"Michael Ball in the Divine role seemed about as excitingly blasphemous a piece of casting as, say, hiring Michael Crawford to play Leigh Bowery.

In fact, the fat-suited Ball, who is appreciably better than John Travolta in the recently released movie version of the show, gives one of the warmest, funniest and most oddly touching performances in a musical that I have ever seen. When Edna is a housebound slattern, he resembles Nero in the wake of some disastrous hormone injection; when Edna is spiffed up and learns to appreciate the worth of her girth, he has a weird look of A S Byatt. Yet with wondrously supple and amusing timing, he packs in an extraordinary range of tones – from moments when he gruffly acknowledges his maleness to sequences where he suggests a poignant shy delicacy and undimmed wonder in this woman who can't leave the house because she's ashamed of her bulk."
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"And because it is about more than show business and contrives to be airy and fresh as well as knowing, it leaves The Producers looking a bit thin on top."






First Night: Hairspray

[jo]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 8:33am

Theatre and film legend and Opening Night guest, Dame Judi Dench, calls the cast " wonderful, without exception"!

[allofmylife]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 8:33am

For London, these are raves. And great for pull quotes. Now if the Shaftesbury cruse can be avoided....

[kec]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 8:36am

From the Evening Standard:

"Here it is at last, the plump girls' feelgood, romantic comedy of a musical, whose dancing heels take a knockout kick at racist bigots in downtown Baltimore 45 years ago. Hairspray catches the heady, hopeful atmosphere of America teetering on the verge of Sixties cultural and political change. Rhythm and blues and Motown, then in their earlier stages, pump out the musical's seductive beat in the hectic dynamism of Jack O'Brien's production with Jerry Mitchell's quicksilver choreography. Agitation for civil rights, soon to gain powerful momentum, begins right here in the city. Sex and love, those vital ingredients without which no musical has legs, do not come in far behind."
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"Hairspray, now in its fifth Broadway year, sent the rare, sweet smell of success wafting through the Shaftesbury last night. Inspired by John Walters's camp, Eighties feast of a film it paints a wicked picture of blue-collar Baltimore, where girls crave their 15 minutes of fame on TV and boys crave girls."
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"It is through Jones's endearingly earnest Tracy, who dances with a lightness belying her size, that links between love, comedy and radical politics are forged. "

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"Marc Shaiman's urgent score, with clever, often witty lyrics written with Scott Whitman, keeps Hairspray pulsating with musical excitement as well as political anger. And Leanne Jones, as smitten, adolescent lover and Miss Teenage Hairspray, effortlessly commands the stage."



Big Hair, Big Fun... and a Huge New Star

[WickedBoy2]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 8:37am

That curse was busted into a huge cloud of hairspray at around 10pm last night!
Its about to bust the £5m mark at the B.O ($10m approx)

Updated On: 10/31/07 at 08:37 AM

[jo]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 8:43am

BBC quotes some of the reviews ( a few already mentioned here, except for The Daily Express) --

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7070838.stm


DAILY EXPRESS - SIMON EDGE

"This joyous West End version, starring Michael Ball in the role of his life, makes it obvious why it swept the board at the Tony Awards. At first Ball is scarcely recognisable as Edna, a put-upon laundress with a 54EEE bust.

It is only when she discovers big-haired glamour that Ball turns on the floodlights, knocking everyone else off the stage.

Don't expect effects or spectacle. This is good, honest song-and-dance fun, where the period pastels on the costumes and sets match the relentless up-beat of the lyrics and tunes.

But the biggest thing about it, apart from Ball's falsies, is its heart."

[best12bars]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 9:02am

My favorite is Dame Judi Dench in that video:

"Everybody's wonderful without exception. It's not often you can say that."

[kec]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 9:04am

The Guardian gave it four out of five stars:

"The great thing about John Waters' 1988 cult movie was that you felt every expense had been spared. But even if Hairspray, in the process of being turned into a Broadway musical, has lost some of its glorious tackiness, it retains its generous spirit: this is still a show that not only hymns physical difference but also the basic right to racial integration."

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"Jerry Mitchell's joyous choreography is the beating heart of the show. There is something dionysiac about it; and, if the show achieves the ecstasy one looks for in a musical, it comes largely through the dance routines.

But the performances, in Jack O'Brien's deliciously fluid production, underline the show's basic benevolence. Leanne Jones is a remarkable Tracy with a talent as high and wide as her scooped-up hair. She puts across Marc Shaiman's numbers with belting brio. And Michael Ball is very funny as her muscular moll of a mum who once entertained dreams of being a designer. "I thought I was going to be the biggest thing in brassieres," Ball announces in gravel-voiced tones. What makes him so good is that he reminds us that heftiness is not incompatible with haute couture."

CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE INVOLVED WITH THE LONDON PRODUCTION!!!!

Now, may we PLEASE have a London Cast Recording?!


Guardian Review

[jo]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 9:32am

>>>Now, may we PLEASE have a London Cast Recording?! <<<


Paging Mr. Marc Shaiman

[kec]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 10:56am

From LondonTheatre.co.uk:

"There can only be one musical in the West End that includes the line ‘Feed the monkey / He’s in the back seat’. No, not Doctor Dolittle, it is Hairspray, and feeding the monkey is – as if you didn’t know – a funky dance move performed on the Corny Collins Show, where our heroine, teenager Tracy Turnblad, shakes her ample booty to the infectious rhythms of the early 60s. Caroline Bishop tried to learn the moves at last night’s opening night…

Running for five years on Broadway, and with a star-studded film version preceding it this year, the London production of the musical Hairspray, which originated from John Waters’s 1988 film, arrives in the capital on a wave of momentum, which, happily, explodes onto the Shaftesbury stage in a two-and-a-half hour package of dazzling colour, funky moves, head-infesting music and a feelgood storyline of one girl’s mission to change the world."

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"Hairspray is billed on the back of Michael Ball and Mel Smith, who play Tracy’s parents Edna and Wilbur Turnblad. Ball seems in his element in a frock, gaining much comedy value from his ample bosoms and behind, while Smith plays Ball’s straight man, milking the pair’s duet Timeless To Me with undisguised pleasure. But they are just two of a huge cast, all of whom get more than a moment to air their sometimes spectacular vocal talents and nifty footwork. Johnnie Fiori as Motormouth Maybelle, Adrian Hansel as Seaweed, Rachael Wooding and Tracie Bennett as Amber and Velma Von Tussle, not to mention the Dynamites and little Lou-Ann (Nicky Griffiths), all make this musical what it is. Newcomer Leanne Jones, in her first professional job after Mountview, steps up to the mark as an endearingly innocent and straightforward Tracy who has got both the moves and the voice, while her true love Link is played by another debutant, the attractively packaged, Elvis-quiffed Ben James Ellis, oozing energy in every dance."





First Night Feature: Hairspray

[CDuffy5062]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 11:09am

Congratulations to Mr. Shaiman and the entire creative team!

[kec]

Posted: 10/31/07 at 7:26pm

The link is to a photo feature on the Daily Mail site that shows Michael making himself up for the role.
Spot the Ball