‘Hairspray’
April 8, Arkansas Repertory Theatre

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The musical “Hairspray” is, in many ways, about progress. It’s also about big hair and about a man dressing up as a woman and about Baltimore. But progress in “Hairspray” is represented by the integration of The Corny Collins teen dance program (and you know it’s a musical because the real life teen dance program the fictional teen dance program was patterned after wasn’t successfully integrated). Progress at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, which is staging a truly exceptional production of “Hairspray” and which will likely prove to be a tough ticket, is measured in a different and harder to quantify way.

But “Hairspray” at the Rep feels like real progress — perhaps it’s the glow coming off of the company’s successful capitol campaign. More likely, it’s that the Rep has just become better at big musicals. “Hairspray” is a great vehicle for that particularly hard-to-find performer — the singer/dancer/comic. “Hairspray” needs a dance floor full of these types and the Rep finds them. It’s a cliche to say there isn’t a weak link in the cast, but that cliche applies in this case.

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“Hairspray” is of course based on the 1988 film by the gleefully trashy John Waters. The story of Baltimore teenager Tracy Turnblad, the “stout” heroine (played with infectious enthusiasm by Lillian Castillo), is part Cinderella, part Civil Rights struggle and part Waters’ corn-fed, all-American vulgarity. Tracy’s parents are, after all, the gold-hearted owner of a joke shop and the transvestite. OK, Edna Turnblad (played at the Rep by D. Scott Withers) has been historically played as a woman by men as diverse as John Travolta (in the film adaptation of the musical) and Waters’ late, longtime collaborator Divine (in the original 1988 film).

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