Hairspray – Bradford Alhambra
Hairspray is one of those rare musicals that can happily combine big, breezy show tunes with a clear political message, but still easily fill big theatres like this.
It’s 1962, Tracy Turnblad is a plus size teenager with an enormous beehive living in racially segregated Baltimore, who has a dream of becoming a star of the Corny Collins TV dance show despite limited talent, which certainly feels familiar in our reality TV obsessed world. Along the way Tracy who is mocked by the 'cool' white teens finds she has much in common with her black friends, and leads an assault on Corny’s show to try and unite the races through the medium of song and dance.
Hairspray was the creation of transgressive cult filmmaker John Waters who brought together a gang of misfits in his home city to cre...