![]() ![]() Unborn Baby Shark Filmed Swimming Around Inside Its Mother Ed Yong To contemporary audiences, some of the script’s quips (“This is America, darling, where everyone deserves a separate but equal chance to fail”) might provoke more winces than smiles. In 2016, the musical feels both of its time and out of it: Its broad message of unity and tolerance seems newly relevant, but its blandly optimistic treatment of racism comes across as anachronistic. The show’s inaugural Broadway production became a surprise hit, winning eight Tony Awards and spawning a movie version in 2007 that took more than $200 million at the box office. Hairspray the musical was born in 2002, adapted by Marc Shaiman from the 1988 John Waters movie about an overweight teenager (Ricki Lake) in ’60s Baltimore who pursues her dual dreams of dancing on a TV show and ending segregation. NBC’s Hairspray Live!, which aired Wednesday night and marked the network’s fourth year of staging a fiendishly ambitious live musical event, offered a sense of exuberance and self-acceptance that felt welcome, aided by spectacular performances from Jennifer Hudson as Motormouth Maybelle and the Hamilton alum Ephraim Sykes as her son, Seaweed. That’s not to say its message can’t resonate, especially approaching the end of a year that’s been widely compared to a flaming receptacle filled with garbage. If Hamilton is the musical America needs, Hairspray is the musical it’s (barely) earned: a mostly well-intentioned, awkward, goofy, and sometimes glorious celebration of nebulous inclusivity told primarily from the perspective of white people. ![]()
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