Broadway At The Beck: Hairspray
Welcome to the 60s! …or at least the caricaturized version, where “The Corny Collins Show” is all teenagers care about (other than their hair of course) and race relations in 1962 are fixed with good old song and dance! Beck’s production of Hairspray is just plain fun- palpable, intoxicating contagious, fun.
As the first locally produced professional production of Hairspray, this show accomplishes a lot. The set, lighting and costumes are generally well-suited to the style of the show and the choreography uses clever and complex formations, but it’s the individual performances that stayed with me at the end of the night.
I was thrilled to see Laurel Held in another Beck Center production (she played Amneris in the Beck’s production of Aida about 6 years ago). She brings a unique physicality and vocal quality to her role as an overbearing and manipulative producer of “The Corny Collins’ Show” and nails the comic timing as a character you love to hate. Baldwin Wallace student, Antwaun Holley, is equally impressive and charismatic as Seaweed, one of the black dancers whose soulful moves are pushed to “Negro Day” on The Corny Collins Show due to the segregation of the day. Tina Stump rounds out the cast as his mother, Motormouth Maybell , by making a completely nondescript character absolutely sparkle with her charisma top-notch vocals that leave the audience roaring with applause.
The show’s protagonist, Tracy Turnblad, played by Brittany Lynne Eckstrom, is sweet and vocally demure. I completely believed her sincerity towards her self-conscious mother and childlike innocence towards her new-found friends who dance on “Negro Day”. But if you’re like me and feel like joining in the big dance numbers, then you’ll be left begging for a bit more chutzpah while she says she’s “gonna shake and shimmy it the best that [she] can today.” Still, she’s an endearing hero who I found to be a welcome guest at the heart of the show.
But the highlight of the night is the hilarious love duet in a fully committed performance by Mark Hefferman (playing Tracy’s father) and Beck Center favorite, Kevin Joseph Kelly—playing Tracy’s mother. It has been about a year since the Beck’s production of The Producer’s, so Kevin Joseph Kelly was about due for another uproarious performance in drag on the Beck’s main stage again…
Matthew Ryan Thompson plays host, Corny Collins with confidence and finesse, but would have also no doubt nailed for the role he was understudying- heartthrob Link Larkin. Although the actor assigned this role struggled with pitch issues, he, along with all of the other young dancers on the “Corny Collins Show” are well-suited with their camera-ready smiles. This is largely thanks to smart strategy on the part of Scott Spence who placed Hairspray in July, snagging many Baldwin-Wallace and Kent State musical theatre conservatory students for the cast during their summer breaks. It will be extremely exciting to see what this partnership with B-W holds for the upcoming season’s production of Spring Awakening.
If you can’t get enough Hairspray, check out one of these selections below, as well as Beck’s suggestions for further reading in their display case just outside the Mackey Mainstage that are also available at the Lakewood Public Library.
Hairspray: Starring Ricki Lake, (yes, you read that right) this is the original movie that this musical is based on. No promises that you’ll enjoy it, but I always enjoy stirring up the blood with a good B-movie every once in a while.
Bonus! Hairspray composer Mark Shaiman released a 3 minute mini-musical about California’s Proposition 8 on FunnyOrDie.com starring Maya Rudolph, Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris and more. It received 1.2 million hits on the first day it was released, so join the crowd!
Tickets are $28 for adults, $25 for seniors (65 and older), $17 for students (with valid ID), and $10 for children (12 and under). An additional $3 service fee per ticket is applied at the time of purchase. Group discounts are available for parties of 13 or more. To purchase tickets for Hairspray call the Beck Center box office at 216.521.2540, ext. 10, or purchase seats online at www.beckcenter.org. Beck Center is located at 17801 Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, just ten minutes west of downtown Cleveland. Free onsite parking is available.
Beck Center’s production of Hairspray is produced through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI) and is sponsored by West Roofing Systems, Cox Communications, the Ohio Arts Council, and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.
Beck Center for the Arts is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization that offers professional theater productions, arts education programming in dance, music, theater, visual arts, early childhood, and creative arts therapies for special needs students, and gallery exhibits featuring regional artists.