nothin “Hairspray” Clears Up The Acne Of The Soul | New Haven Independent

Hairspray” Clears Up The Acne Of The Soul

Lucy Gellman Photo

Dejesus, Bazinet and Allison Hardy as Edna, Velma and Motormouth.

Looking outward from a small, just-bright-enough circle of light, Edna Turnblad steeled herself for an onslaught of epithets, defiantly holding a sign that read Hungry for Justice” while a lily-white crowd encircled her, white teeth glistening like fangs in the stage light. To her left, Motormouth Maybelle joined in, hoisting a placard that read End Segregation Now!” The two looked at each other briefly, as Velma von Tussle tried to pry her way through them. I am big, blonde, and beautiful,” they took turns announcing. A policeman approached, raised his club, and leaned in.

With ancillary posters bearing slogans such as Victory Will Be Ours,” Equality for Everyone,” and Black Is Beautiful,” the scene could have been a Black Lives Matter protest in New Haven. Or a revolutionary-minded commotion outside of a Donald Trump rally, where the presidential candidate has proposed a new wave of religious segregation.

Instead, it was the end of Act I of Hairspray, the film-turned-Broadway musical that catapulted to fame in 2002 with a story about an earlier civil rights era, in its final moments of Cross Drama’s dress rehearsal.

Thursday through Saturday, Cross Drama will perform the play in the school’s auditorium, where the script’s message springs to life with a timely reminder of the power of unity and the importance of social revolution. 

Protesters outside the Corny Collins Show.

Set in 1960s Baltimore, Hairspray thrives on and demands social unrest, ultimately drawing its strongest conflicts and most endearing moments from it. Over a series of days (in our world, about two hours), the musical follows high school student and lifelong big hair enthusiast Tracy Turnblad (Jodi Walters) as she attempts to fulfill a dream: dancing on the feel-good, Buddy-Deane-esque Corny Collins Show with Elvis-wannabe dudebro hunk Link Larkin (Yaakov Gottlieb). In Tracy’s impressionable eyes, he’s the whole package; his dweeby and very white girlfriend Amber von Tussle (Julianne Frechette) is decidedly not.

Tracy reaches her goal pretty close to the beginning of the musical, only to keep going. When she announces live to Collins that she’s fully in favor of integrating the show, some serious chaos breaks loose. Von Tussle and her mother Velma (Heather Bazinet) — who happens to be Collins’s producer, and is scheming to help her daughter win the annual Miss Baltimore Crab pageant — works to do everything she can to keep Turnblad off the dance floor and airwaves. Turnblad, in return, only grows more defiant. She enlists the help of her very cool parents Edna (Luis Dejesus, in full drag) and Wilbur (Caeron Gaulin) and friends Seaweed J. Stubbs (Tyheed Scurry), Penny Pingleton (Jordan Lampo), and Inez (Leah Rivers) to peacefully protest in favor of having dancers of color. They do. There’s a run-in with the police and an overnight in jail. But they get their happy ending, sock-hopping towards it with humor, bravery, and the ultimate realization that a racially unified front is necessary for their lives, if not also the future of Baltimore.

Walters, center, with Juliann Frechette, William McKinney, and Gottlieb behind her.

Hairspray has all of the essential elements of a classic musical: corny and endearing humor, difficult relationships that somehow resolve themselves, a clear sense of right and wrong that works itself out through dance moves and smart lyrics. But for a complicated love letter to Baltimore, the play doubles as an ode to the old, the new, and the messy of New Haven when it meets Cross’s stage. For Cross Drama Director Jennifer Frechette, that fearless, fabulous, and very timely rendition was always the goal. 

Not that the journey was clear cut. Frechette wasn’t initially sure that Hairspray was the right piece for the group, which has in past years performed Once On This Island, Into the Woods and Fiddler on The Roof. But she grew to love the work after re-watching John Waters’ 1988 film, and had her students do the same one day after school. That was in mid-2015. By the time Fiddler had been mounted as Cross Drama’s spring musical, Frechette felt ready to press ahead with Hairspray for the following year. 

I said: you know what, I think it’s time,” she said midway through Wednesday’s final dress rehearsal, as the stage was transformed into downtown Baltimore, with revolving storefronts and quaintly decorated homes. It’s just time. I wanted to do a show that could feature more of our population. I said: If I do a show that they can see themselves in, they’ll come out for it.”

Scurry as Seaweed J. Stubbs.

It was important to her, she added, that we cast the show racially accurate, because we can.” That decision isn’t always popular in contemporary castings of the musical, which features a large ensemble that spends much of the play divided by race. She stood firm on the issue. If Cross Drama was going to do it, the group was going to do it right. That meant sticking to a difficult and at times politically cumbersome script, where terms like Negro” initially stuck out. 

It was important to me that we tell that story correctly,” Frechette said. We can do it right. It’s pertinent. It’s now. It’s fresh. Even though it’s old, it’s not. We feel it here … in New Haven it’s about neighborhood and nationality. It’s so relevant at Cross.” 

Her words rang true Wednesday, as the absurdly talented cast and crew banded together one last time before its first public performance. Walters plays an outstanding Tracy, bounding out of bed for her number Good Morning Baltimore” with enough energy and optimism to get her through several very trying days. She dances jubilantly with the rats on the street, and makes you want to do the same.

Lampo as Penny Pingleton.

A dynamic if understated Scurry rocks it as Seaweed, showing Tracy (and us) what it means to want a change that is bigger than yourself, as he dances his way into Penny Pingleton’s heart (and bed) — and she into his. As Pingleton, Lampo shines; she gives a riveting verve to her voice as she delivers lines such as in my ivory tower / life was just a Hostess snack / but now I’ve tasted chocolate / and I’m never going back.” Dejesus, who stunned as an underclassman in Into the Woods, is funny and at times downright transfixing as Edna, seemingly carrying the pit band as much as they carry him.

Feet!

But it’s more than some outstanding performances that make the show. As a showbizzy ballad of racial justice and self-love, Hairspray finds real pertinence among this cast, crew, and pit of forty-some students, who are in real life grappling with young romance, high school cliques, and parental disagreements that spring, inevitably, from a generational divide. Students don’t just embrace learning about each other because it’s in the script; they seem genuinely thrilled to be there together, and are constantly growing through the roles. Thanks to some wild choreography from dancer Luis Antonio and beautiful musical direction for voice and band from John Whitney and Lewis Nelken, Hairspray provides a thoroughly danceable reminder of why banding together against hatred in any form — what Tracy calls acne of the soul” early on — is pretty important. Which is kind of what Frechette is going for.

I’m hoping, praying that the audience goes away not just entertained because it was funny and it was cute, but because there’s a message,” Frechette said. I think that’s more important to me than anything else.”

Hairspray runs March 17 to 20 at the Wilbur Cross High School auditorium. Performances on March 17, 18, and 19 are at 7 p.m. The performance on March 20 is at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $13 for reserved seating. Visit Cross Drama’s website for more information.

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