There’s a lot to love about the idea of televising live musicals. When it works, you almost get the transportative magic of live theatre, when live theatre itself can be difficult or even impossible (how many decades is Hamilton sold out for now?) to see for yourself.
It’s never quite the same — sometimes you just need the audience to nail the timing for a joke, or to build energy in a showstopper — but it’s a pretty good second-best for anyone who doesn’t have access to a stage, and Hairspray, well… It’s a pretty forgiving musical to pick.
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If you have a charming Tracy, as Hairspray Live! had in the adorable Maddie Baillio, the whole show takes off, as she proves in I Can Hear the Bells, managing to pull us into her fantasy world even with some awkward camera work threatening to snap us back out of the spell.
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Baillio isn’t the only one who threw herself into her role. Although Hairspray Live! never had a moment as perfect as Zac Efron frenching a photo of Nikki Blonksy in the 2007 movie version (nobody commits like Zefron), Hairspray Live’s cast of seasoned theatre professionals showed us how to fit the spectacle of the stage onto the small screen. Welcome to the 60’s – a big, beautiful, bouncy number – hit that nail square on the head, aided by the giddy catchiness of the music. Try not to tap your foot along with that beat, I dare you:
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There’s a trick to the choreography of moving stage to screen that’s less obvious in the big numbers, but can trip up the smaller ones. With 13 cameras and a live audience, which direction do you cheat out to? It can wind up looking awkward and killing the willing suspension of disbelief musicals live and breathe on.
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Take a lesson from Martin Short and Harvey Fierstein, stage-to-TV veterans: The big showstoppers might overwhelm the audience with a wall of music and choreography, but one of the best moments of the night was a simple song-and-dance routine they made look easy. “Timeless to Me” is always a sweet, breezy number, but Short and Fierstein remind us you don’t need bells and whistles to sweep an audience away: Sometimes you just need good timing, good chemistry, and one of the cutest numbers around.
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Theatre has always existed as commentary and reflection on the society around it, which made Hairspray – set in the politically turbulent sixties and focused on race relations — feel both prescient and relevant. By the time Jennifer Hudson blew the doors off the set with the last note of “I Know Where I’ve Been,” many of the cast members were openly tearful — and it’s no surprise. In the current climate, when we’ve been forcefully reminded that the front door is still closed to so many people, “I Know Where I’ve Been” — and Jennifer Hudson’s powerhouse performance of it — feels all too fresh and close to home.
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Hairspray is so bright and bubbly, it can be easy to forget the strife that colorful candy coating is covering. Baltimore riots turned into dance choreography, the line drawn between black and white characters are a function of scene blocking, and Penny’s mom embraces Seaweed on live television. It’s a comedy, and it’s meant to be light-hearted. But “I Know Where I’ve Been” reminded us there’s often truth behind the set dressing and dance numbers: and that is good live theatre.
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We really enjoyed the show, when all is said and done — and though we all believed it would be hard to beat “The Wiz,” “Hairspray Live!” gave us just the sunny beauty we’ve been craving. They really are raising their game every single year — and not just because Kristin Chenoweth and Jennifer Hudson improve everything they touch.
“Hairspray Live!” is presented by NBC in full, below:
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