Hairspray

Synopsis

Hairspray tells the story of geeky teen Tracy Turnblad - a big girl with a big heart, big dreams, a big stage mother and even bigger hair - who finds celebrity on TV dance programme. Can Tracy get the guy and still have time to change the world?

Our Review:

23 April 2013

John Waters clearly has a keen sense of irony, if maybe stretched to the limit by his cult classic being a commercial hit. And surprisingly, it was based on true events: a Baltimore Radio Show stormed by white teens to join in the dancing on the day for black youngsters.

Also unusual: Tracey Turnblad (Freya Sutton’s remarkable debut) is an immediate success, from dancer to Miss Hairspray, despite opposition from the Ugly Sisters, the Von Tussles (well, mother and daughter: Lucy Benjamin and Gemma Sutton), but problems, social and personal, soon rear their ugly heads. You wonder too about some of the precarious staging: the Turnblad home is a rostrum so tiny it’d give HandS officers a fit, with two girls energetically dancing right in front of Mrs T busy ironing.

While raising serious issues such as integration, and veering between pc and stonkingly un pc (if true to the times), there are plenty of laughs; how could there not be with the comically gro...

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