Education of the Modern Doctor: Marcus Welby vs. House 
Velma Von Tussle (Leight Scarritt, center) bites butt. Just ask Tracy Turnblad (Bethany Slomka, left) and her mom Edna (Peter Van Norden).
Tracy Turnblad’s mom Edna is so fat that she eventually had to let her shower curtain out. Now, that’s fat. And as Hairspray, the Broadway Musical opens, girth is about all Edna has in common with her chunky little teenager. While the latter is bustin’ out all over with dreams of local TV stardom, Edna fights such silly notions, mostly out of her deflated sense of self. Life’s about to make short work of Edna’s pesky midlife crisis—amid lead character Tracy’s spunk and persistence, she comes of age and stays there. Indeed, “You Can’t Stop the Beat” is a spot-on title for the show’s closing number.
Mix that story with its setting—1962 Baltimore, where segregation soils the promise of John Kennedy’s New Frontier—and you have the basis for a musical bigger than Tracy and Edna put together. If you’re opening your 35th season at The San Diego Repertory Theatre, you also face the daunting prospect of uncharted territory in mounting it (with 74 actors and musicians, it’s the largest production in Rep history). And despite a short-lived case of opening-night butterflies, you go ahead and pull it off in perfectly fine fashion. Amid all this infectious fun, those nasty ol’ jitters take care of themselves.
Hairspray is an exceedingly difficult show amid its hair-trigger shift in focus—while Tracy (Bethany Slomka) and Edna (Peter Van Norden) innocently jockey for position in the household one minute (“Welcome to the ’60s”), Seaweed Stubbs (Tony Melson) and his mom Motormouth Maybelle (Pam Trotter) might be reflecting on the scourge of racial prejudice the next (Trotter’s outstanding turn on “I Know Where I’ve Been” will make off with your heart).
But director Sam Woodhouse and choreographer Javier Velasco are consistently on the same page, and Slomka is excellent as star-struck Tracy, whose many facets change on a dime. Interracial relationships, teenage angst and marital stability weigh in the mix; all are clearly defined, and everybody (including a hilarious Leigh Scarritt as race-baiting Velma Von Tussle) is in very good voice with Marc Shaiman’s music and Scott Wittman’s words.
Trevor Norton’s scene concept is cleverly ’60s, but he overstates his idea. A little less design would have made more room for the dance numbers and given greater focus to the players (20 of whom are students at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts).
Regardless, you’ll be seeing a wholly enjoyable piece of work, which won no fewer than 33 awards in its day, including Tonys for Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical in 2003 (the Broadway original was helmed by Jack O’Brien, The Old Globe Theatre’s former artistic director). Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan have written on some big and complex issues, but they gave Tracy a heart to match.
This review is based on the opening-night performance of July 23. Hairspray runs through Aug. 15 at The Lyceum, 79 Horton Plaza, Downtown. $30-$53. sdrep.org. Write to marty@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
