Hier een stuk van Matt Wolf in The Guardian over de vloek van het Shaftesbury Theatre, die overigens net onder new management (Stage Entertainment) is:

When Hairspray opens today considerably more will be riding on the evening’s events than simply finding out if a proven Broadway hit can repeat its success in London. Running as a parallel if uneasy subtext to the critical fortunes of the production itself will be the question of whether its West End home, the Shaftesbury, will at last have that gold-plated commercial success that seems to have famously eluded a theatre known around town as a home for the theatrically ill-fated. Did you see Daddy Cool, Napoleon, and Lautrec? I didn’t think so, and nor, it would seem, did too many others ...

That assessment might seem severe, given a venue that has hosted the original West End productions of both Follies and Rent, not to mention the UK transfers of Broadway Tony winners Thoroughly Modern Millie, with Amanda Holden and Maureen Lipman, and The Who’s Tommy, with Paul Keating and Kim Wilde. But guess what? The lesser-known fact about those four shows, as has been the case with all too many Shaftesbury tenants one can cite, is that they lost money - in some cases a considerable amount. As a result, you tend to believe Hairspray star Michael Ball when he says that director Jack O’Brien’s production should with luck do well in London “because it’s such a superior work in every way.” And also because, as Ball told me earlier this month, “it would be nice to have a hit here and change the thing about this theatre.”

That “thing,” to be fair, isn’t unique to the Shaftesbury - a venue that would seem ideally positioned, given its imposing frontage at a major intersection in the centre of the capital. Instead, the prevailing belief is that all too many people drive by the theatre without setting foot in it. One can more readily understand the long term difficulties encountered at the Piccadilly, a venue that has prompted a long-standing, possibly apocryphal anecdote about stage doorkeepers who in bygone years would answer the phone, “Hello, and thank you for calling the house of flops.” I still recall seeing an Easter weekend matinee of Elaine Paige, of all people, in a Peter Hall production of The Misanthrope that was so sparsely attended that one felt tempted to cancel the performance altogether and invite the cast out for tea. And then there’s the parade of Piccadilly musicals of considerably less calibre than, well, Parade: La Cava, Which Witch, King, and Mutiny! are just some of the now-notorious productions to have graced that particular stage.

Recent years, though, have proved kinder, dispelling the prevailing assumption that the Piccadilly, very much unlike the Shaftesbury, was too difficult for showgoers to find, tucked away as it is from the pedestrian traffic along Shaftesbury Avenue. Judi Dench sells out anywhere she plays, as she did for Peter Hall there in a revival of Filumena, while Matthew Bourne’s work and, especially, the Michael Grandage revival of Guys and Dolls, with Ewan McGregor and Jane Krakowski in its original cast, found hordes of hopefuls crowding the stage door for autographs.

On Broadway, it seems, there’s nothing a blighted theatre benefits from more than a Tony winning Brit. For years, the Belasco Theatre on West 44th Street was considered a playhouse non grata, situated on the “wrong” side of Broadway (i.e. away from the general mix of theatres) and, what’s more, rumoured to be haunted by the ghost of the theatrical legend who gives the venue its name. That, however, was before Ralph Fiennes took up residency there in 1995 with a Hamlet that went on to sell out. Does this offer further proof that no theatre is so blighted that a single hit can’t shift its fortunes? Let’s hope Hairspray restores the buzz to the Shaftesbury that - for those of a certain vintage - lingers on from 40 years ago. The tenant then? A musical by the not dissimilar name of Hair.

Ook Charles Spencer is positief in de Telegraph:

Tense nervous headache? Feeling a little peaky? Hungover? Then for heaven’s sake give this show a miss. It will strike you as a terrifying vision of hell. All that noise, my dear, and the people.
   
If you are up for a good time, however, and especially if you are a teenage girl who has just downed a couple of alcopops, it will strike you as heaven on earth. You will laugh, you will scream, you might even shed a sentimental tear or two. I even managed to make quite a night of it myself, and I’m male and middle-aged, as the National Theatre boss, Nicholas Hytner, is fond of pointing out.

The mystery about this ebullient and good-hearted show is that it has taken so long to arrive in England, and then only to find a berth at the Shaftesbury, which, after such jaw-droppingly terrible shows as Napoleon, Lautrec, Batboy and others too ghastly to recall, is widely regarded as a graveyard for doomed musicals.

But, on Broadway, Hairspray is a smash hit. I caught it there five years ago, and it is still going strong, having grossed some $200 million to date.

Based on the 1988 John Waters movie, and recently turned into a film musical starring John Travolta, Hairspray tells the story of Tracy Turnblad, a short, rotund teenage schoolgirl who is determined to become a star dancer on the Corny Collins TV pop show.
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The year is 1962, the action takes place in Baltimore, and the irrepressible Tracy is determined not to let her chunky body rule out her chances. She endures insults and malice along the way, but sticks to her guns, and even succeeds in gaining the love of the town hunk. And she instinctively sides with the black youngsters, who are allowed to participate in the strictly segregated show only on special “Negro” days. Hairspray, which appears to have barely a thought in its head, is actually a touching protest against prejudice, and a celebration of the birth of America’s civil-rights movement as Tracy brings the racial barriers crashing down.

Mercifully, the show never descends into worthiness. Not that it could, with its preposterous hairstyles, kitsch, retina-bruising designs and a superb pop score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, which gloriously captures the sounds of pop before the arrival of the Beatles — girl groups, rock and roll, rhythm and blues and an amazing gospel number that almost lifts the roof off the theatre.

There’s even a delightful vaudevillian routine for Michael Ball, who plays Tracy’s corpulent mum in spectacular big-bosomed drag and looks as if he’s having the time of his life, and Mel Smith as her devoted, joke-shop-owning husband.

The lyrics occasionally aspire to real wit — I particularly liked the song for the glamorously bitchy and racist villain of the piece (excellent Tracie Bennett), who insists: “You can say I’m a bigot but it’s just not true/I love Sammy Davis and he’s black and a Jew.”

Director Jack O’Brien, who alternates raucous musicals like this with superb revivals of Tom Stoppard at the Lincoln Centre, ensures that sentiment and laughter are mixed in just the right proportions in a show that offers a sugar-rush of pleasure.

Jerry Mitchell’s choreography is splendidly effervescent and newcomer Leanne Jones, straight out of drama school and making her professional debut, has exactly the right bubble and bounce as Tracy, moving with a lightness of foot that belies her avoirdupois.

The show might be less slick than in New York, but there is no mistaking its big, raucous heart.

I saw Hairspray at the final preview rather than the press night, and the audience’s whooping response and spontaneous standing ovation suggest it could prove to be the big hit that has eluded the Shaftesbury for so long.

**** van Michael Billington in The Guardian:

The great thing about John Waters’ 1988 cult movie was that you felt every expense had been spared. But even if Hairspray, in the process of being turned into a Broadway musical, has lost some of its glorious tackiness, it retains its generous spirit: this is still a show that not only hymns physical difference but also the basic right to racial integration.

Even in its new theatrical form, the book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan remains perilously thin. Unlike, of course, the show’s heroine, Tracy Turnblad, a 16-year-old Baltimore girl who is extremely well-rounded. Avoirdupois notwithstanding, Tracy gets hooked on a TV dance show and determines to beat the favoured contestant to become Miss Hairspray 1962. Part of the show’s good-hearted charm lies in seeing how Tracy, from her first experience of sexy black dancing in the school gym, determines to fight segregation on Baltimore’s daytime TV.

At its best, the show gently mocks the naivety of white liberalism. “I wish every day were negro day,” Tracy remarks of TV’s monthly obeisance to Baltimore’s racial divide. “In our house, it is,” one of Tracy’s black chums wanly retorts. At its worst, Hairspray lapses into sentimental piety. Where the show really scores is in its ability to integrate serious issues into a lightweight plot.

Jerry Mitchell’s joyous choreography is the beating heart of the show. There is something dionysiac about it; and, if the show achieves the ecstasy one looks for in a musical, it comes largely through the dance routines.

But the performances, in Jack O’Brien’s deliciously fluid production, underline the show’s basic benevolence. Leanne Jones is a remarkable Tracy with a talent as high and wide as her scooped-up hair. She puts across Marc Shaiman’s numbers with belting brio. And Michael Ball is very funny as her muscular moll of a mum who once entertained dreams of being a designer. “I thought I was going to be the biggest thing in brassieres,” Ball announces in gravel-voiced tones. What makes him so good is that he reminds us that heftiness is not incompatible with haute couture.

Mel Smith, as Tracy’s joke-retailing dad, seems underemployed until he joins Ball in a front-cloth duo.

Weer **** van Nicholas De Jongh in de Evening Standard. Het komt niet vaak voor dat een Broadwayhit ook zulke positieve recensies in Londen ontvangt. Misschien krijgt het Shaftesbury Theatre eindelijk een vette hit.

Here it is at last, the plump girls’ feelgood, romantic comedy of a musical, whose dancing heels take a knockout kick at racist bigots in downtown Baltimore 45 years ago. Hairspray catches the heady, hopeful atmosphere of America teetering on the verge of Sixties cultural and political change. Rhythm and blues and Motown, then in their earlier stages, pump out the musical’s seductive beat in the hectic dynamism of Jack O’Brien’s production with Jerry Mitchell’s quicksilver choreography. Agitation for civil rights, soon to gain powerful momentum, begins right here in the city. Sex and love, those vital ingredients without which no musical has legs, do not come in far behind.

Opening night gallery

Hairspray, now in its fifth Broadway year, sent the rare, sweet smell of success wafting through the Shaftesbury last night. Inspired by John Walters’s camp, Eighties feast of a film it paints a wicked picture of blue-collar Baltimore, where girls crave their 15 minutes of fame on TV and boys crave girls. It comes at us in rare musical parts: the first part is low-camp satire and burlesque: Michael Ball deliciously fattened up and dragged down in bland frocks and lurid gowns, majestically slips into the role of the fat, foghorned laundress, Edna Turnblad, who responds to a large insult with a majestically contemptuous “Excuse me.” Leanne Jones, in an astonishingly accomplished stage debut, plays Edna’s big-sized daughter, Tracy, whose hair stands high as a beehive-and who hankers to become Miss Teenage Hairspray on local TV. The other part takes a radically political turn in a Baltimore where young blacks and whites cannot dance together.

It is through Jones’s endearingly earnest Tracy, who dances with a lightness belying her size, that links between love, comedy and radical politicsare forged. “I just think it’s stupid we can’t all dance together,” Tracy says and leads the picketing of the local TV station. Here Tracie Bennett’s witch-like, blonde and racist producer schemes to ensure her evil daughter, Rachel Wooding’s Amber, beats Tracy for the coveted Hairspray title. The book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan may culminate in typical, glorious absurdity when Ball bursts out of a giant can of Hairspray to sing the tremendous last number,You Can’t Stop The Beat, but the musical is sustained by its attack on racial discrimination and its alluring, escapist, fairytale elements. Ben James-Ellis’s would-be hunk, Link Larkin, collides with Tracy and love at first sight breaks out on both sides: “We won’t go all the way, but I’ll go pretty far,” she sings, dreaming of an imminent,erotic future. And the record shop where Johnnie Fiori’s exuberant Motormouth Maybelle puts her terrific voice to good effect draws blacks and whites together.

Marc Shaiman’s urgent score, with clever, often witty lyrics written with Scott Whitman, keeps Hairspray pulsating with musical excitement as well as political anger. And Leanne Jones, as smitten, adolescent lover and Miss Teenage Hairspray, effortlessly commands the stage. She will hearten all actresses who imagine that only the pencil-thin can inherit the lead dressing room.

Weer **** van Michael Coveney voor whatsonstage:

It is hard to credit that some preview punters failed to recognise Michael Ball as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Sure, he’s wearing dress and looks a few kilos overweight, but there’s no undue effeminacy in his performance, and none of the savage grotesquerie Harvey Fierstein brought to the role on Broadway, or the plasticized timorousness of John Travolta in the recent film of the musical.

Although that film is a brilliant translation of the stage musical (and a far cry from the art house, rackety ebullience of the John Waters 1988 original cult movie), the stage show is the real business in its hymn to racial integration in downtown Baltimore circa 1962, and its suddenly politically incorrect celebration of triumph in obesity.

A cynic might reflect that the Broadway version, now in its fifth fatty year, is a hit because it makes the New York audiences of out-of-towners — who get more obese by the minute — feel better, or at least not so bad, about themselves. But in the story of fat kid Tracy Turnblad, hooked on a local television talent show and bent on becoming Miss Teenage Hairspray, there is also a sense of a community, and indeed a nation, on the brink.

This is the brief interregnum of the Kennedy era. Even Edna “has a dream,” if only one of breaking out of her home laundry business into extra large haute couture. The brilliance of Marc Shaiman’s pop and blues score — not even half marks for originality, many for witty pastiche — is to capture this transitional period in music, too, as teenagers find their voices and protest songs seem like a good idea.

The show is also a cultural metaphor as Corny Collins’s television studio is invaded by Tracy’s new friends cross the line from detention class, exploding into the limelight with snake-hipped dance routines and unambiguously sexy gyrations.

And the ecstatic choreography of Jerry Mitchell combines with the delightful, primary-coloured costumes of Broadway veteran William Ivey Long to create a riotous scene at the oversize shop where mother and daughter are kitted out in style and the resident mannequins include a Supremes tribute trio.

Director Jack O’Brien has tapped adventurously into the British talent pool, not only in giving the richly voiced Michael Ball a role to relish, but teaming him with the wonderfully rumpled Mel Smith as the toyshop owner husband — he brings a battered vaudevillian charm to their “Timeless to Me” duet — as well as discovering the powerhouse talent of Leanne Jones as Tracy.

Tracie Bennett makes a good impression, too, as the vampiric television producer, and Elinor Collett and Adrian Hansel are a dynamic duo on the dance floor where the beat you can’t stop erases the social divide. This is indeed a rare thing: a totally daffy and delightful musical where the serious issues are as good for you as a big stick of pink candyfloss.

He wat fijn. En verdiend. Ga snel kijken!

een vraagje: wij (sebas en ik) gaan in de eerste week van 2008 naar london, en willen deze show graag zien, is reseveren nodig denkken jullie of zijn er ook nog goede plaatste last minute vrij?

Ik heb vorige week gereserveerd voor 1 januari en toen was het bijna helemaal uitverkocht.
Dus ik denk dat het aan te raden is om van tevoren te reserveren.

Caroline1 - 01 November 2007 03:14 PM

Ik heb vorige week gereserveerd voor 1 januari en toen was het bijna helemaal uitverkocht.
Dus ik denk dat het aan te raden is om van tevoren te reserveren.

oke thanx

Kerstvakantieperiode is een ramp qua kaarten in Londen, dus wees wijs en BOEK (en dat uit de mond van iemand die nooit wat boekt haha…maar daar had ik 2 januari in Londen een SPIJT van!)

Jaccozoveel - 01 November 2007 04:57 PM

Kerstvakantieperiode is een ramp qua kaarten in Londen, dus wees wijs en BOEK (en dat uit de mond van iemand die nooit wat boekt haha…maar daar had ik 2 januari in Londen een SPIJT van!)

we hebben al een paar show (6 geloof ik) geboekt, maar kga v/d week maar eens langs het reisburo om hairspray bij te boeken

zo heb nu ook kaartjes, 1 januari 19.30

Jaccozoveel - 01 November 2007 04:57 PM

Kerstvakantieperiode is een ramp qua kaarten in Londen, dus wees wijs en BOEK (en dat uit de mond van iemand die nooit wat boekt haha…maar daar had ik 2 januari in Londen een SPIJT van!)

Spijt in de zin van: er waren geen kaarten meer te krijgen en we waren er voor niks.
Of in de zin van: het was erg druk, maar we hebben nog wel kaartjes kunnen krijgen?

Ik heb namelijk wel kaarten voor Hairspray, maar er staan nog 4 andere musicals op het programma die we daar pas willen kopen (zoals Wicked).....

Voor niks ben je nooit in Londen, maar kaarten voor een hit als WICKED in de kerstvakantie moet je echt NU NU NU NU kopen…..

Ik heb Hairspray een paar weken geleden (18 okt - 2e week tryouts) in Londen gezien. En vond het een hele goede, energieke voorstelling, die 10 keer meer overtuigde dan de de film. De film is op een aantal punten uitgebreider dan de stage-versie, maar dat is niet persé beter. Ik vond het verhaal nu vaak beter te volgen, en ook geloofwaardiger. Vond de Nablijfklas wel (te) kort, het nummer Ladies Choice, wat ik gewoon een heerlijk lied vind, zit er helaas ook niet in. En ook negro day was behoorlijk gemarginaliseerd.

De show maakt een zeer verzorgde indruk, met kleurrijk decor en kostuums. En heel veel ensemble dansnummers die er super gelikt uitzien. Het Shaftsbury Theatre met al zijn roze en met zijn witte tierelantijntjes past qua ambiance ook perfect bij de voorstelling. Het publiek was ook heel enthousiast, wat zeker voor extra sfeer zorgde.

Als je op de site van Hairspray kijkt, staat een aantal leuke filmpjes. Nr 5 (let op er zijn er twee, je moet de Hair behind Hairspray hebben) O.a. over de man die de pruiken maakt, uit mijn hoofd meer dan zestig, die elke dag opnieuw gestyled moeten worden. Nr. 7 is een filmpje over de fatsuit van Michael Ball. Leuke kijkjes in de keuken. http://hairspray.lastminuteliving.com/

Hairspray is vooral een ensemblestuk, waarbij de hoofdrollen dienend aan het verhaal zijn. Maar natuurlijk valt of staat het met hoe een artiest zijn rol invult.
Edna Turnblad, door Michael Ball, vond ik geweldig. Die man staat met een rust en overtuiging op dat podium, dat hij alle tijd lijkt te hebben om te genieten, en zich volledig op zijn rol te richten. Ik had vooraf iets van laat hij het maar waar maken, maar geloof mij iedereen zou wel zo’n lieve moeder willen hebben.
Zijn tegenspeler Mel Smith speelt haar man Wilbur Turnblad heeft een kleine rol. Het duet tussen Edna (Ball) en Wilbur (Smith) Turnblad is een van de hoogtepunten van de show. Ik heb vooral genoten van de humor tussen hen beiden. Gespeeld of niet, in ieder geval 100% overtuigend.
Leanne Jones debuteert als hun dochter Tracy. Zij staat vol overtuiging te zingen, en straalt de hele voorstelling door. Heeft echt nog het jeugdige enthousiasme die bij de rol past.
Ben James-Ellis speelt Link Larkin, de populairste jongen van de school en tv. Door het intensief volgen van ADWD was ik zeer benieuwd hoe hij het ervan af zou brengen. De jongen is 18 jaar, en heeft zijn opleiding afgebroken om deze kans te grijpen. Op een aantal punten is hij geslaagd, met name zijn danskwaliteiten zijn goed. Zingen gaat ook heel goed, alhoewel het geen power-zanger is, en als hij zich niet gek laat maken, kan hij uitgroeien tot een man die echt een verhaal kan vertellen. Acterend vond ik hem nog niet aan de maat. Van de drie disciplines is dat ook degene die zich het minst laat sturen door hard te werken, het is meer niet dan wel doen. Laat hem vijf jaar meedraaien, en wie weet wat dan….
Seaweed, Adrian Hansel, is qua zang een fractie minder vergeleken met de film. Maar door de bank genomen een heerlijke jongen om naar te kijken, soepele heupen en net niet teveel macho.
Penny, Elinor Collet, was voor mij de verrassing van de show. Een goed gevoel voor timing maakt dat zij haar rol veel meer diepte geeft dan in de film wordt gedaan. Zij kreeg van de bijrollen het meest enthousiaste applaus.
Motormouth Maybell, Johnnie Fiori, past qua gewicht zeker in de show, en speelt vol overgave de rol van big black mama. “I know where I’ve been” over de strijd voor gelijke rechten, wist mij diep te ontroeren. Andere momenten is ze wat minder spot on, vooral acterend is zij niet de meest sterke van het stel.
Tracie Bennet, als Velma van Tussle, brengt net iets meer humor mee dan Michelle Pfeiffer, maar het is vooral een kwestie van smaak wat je het meest aanspreekt.
Corny Collins door Paul Manuel, vond ik heerlijk relaxed, en kwam naar mijn mening veel beter uit de verf dan in de film

Al met al een voorstelling waar met liefde aan gewerkt is, en een zeer goede indruk achter heeft gelaten bij mij.

Tot slot wil ik Jacco nog bedanken voor zijn hotel tip. Seven Dials hotel ligt op nog geen 300 m van dit theater verwijderd. O ja, en er zijn ook dagkaarten £ 25 voor de eerste rij, max. 2 per persoon, beschikbaar van 10 am.