As with its production of August: Osage County earlier this year, Coral Gables’ Actors’ Playhouse has attracted some of the best talent in South Florida for its lavish, giggle-inducing production of Hairspray, the Tony Award-winning musical based on John Waters’ slyly subversive 1988 movie about self-esteem in racially segregated Kennedy-era Baltimore.
When David Arisco began assembling the show, one casting choice must have been obvious. The hulking, doughy artistic director chose himself to play poor, put-upon housewife and mother Edna Turnblad, the gender-bent role originated by Harvey Fierstein on Broadway and John Travolta on film. Arisco is the least of the company, tossing away some of script’s best punch lines and singing in a marginally musical style, but the visual of him in housedress drag looming over the rest of the cast still sells it.
He seems to cede the production to chubby dynamo Joline Mujica as Edna’s daughter Tracy. Determined to break into television on the local Corny Collins dance show, as soon as succeeds at the goal Tracy starts breaking down the program’s race policy so that “every day is Negro day.” There are messages about acceptance and tolerance in Hairspray, but they never seem to dampen the fun of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s period pitch-perfect score or Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan’s laugh-out-loud script.
Among the standouts in the sizeable cast are Avi Hoffman as Edna’s joy-buzzer hubby Wilbur, Julie Kleiner as Tracy’s dithery sidekick, who makes a great duckling-to-swan transition, and dancing whiz Ronald Duncan as her taboo beau. Big-voiced Avery Sommers scores as aptly named Motormouth Maybelle with her 11 o’clock gospel number and Kim Cozort amuses as the TV show’s prejudiced producer.
Barbara Flaten’s ‘60s-knockoff choreography keeps the show in constant motion, and Sean McClelland’s sets and Ellis Tillman’s costumes are great eye candy. David Nagy’s band assures us that — as the finale puts it — You Can’t Stop the Beat, and at Actors’ Playhouse, it would be foolhardy to try.
HAIRSPRAY, Actors’ Playhouse, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables. Through Sunday, Nov. 13. Tickets: $15-$50. Call: (305) 444-9293.
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The dark days of the House Un-American Activities Committee hover over Amy Herzog’s involving After the Revolution, but that 1950s Communist witch hunt is only the jumping-off point for this family drama of loyalty and legacy.
The question of “naming names” has been explored is such diverse works as Arthur Miller’s After the Fall and the 1976 film drama, The Front. Instead, Herzog asks us to consider the consequences when an avowed Marxist, martyred by the committee and now dead, turns out not to be what his admiring granddaughter thought he was.
That is the dilemma facing recent law school graduate Emma Joseph, who runs a foundation named in her grandfather’s honor, dedicated to defending the unjustly accused or merely the politically unpopular. As played by accomplished young Jackie Rivera, Emma is assured and strong-headed, signs that her moorings will soon be knocked out from under her.
Sure enough, it soon surfaces in a new book about to be published that Gramps was not only a Communist, but he supplied government secrets to the Russians in the 1940s. This news not only puts Emma’s foundation in jeopardy, but threatens her relationship with her unapologetically Marxist teacher father, who knew his father dabbled in spying, but kept that little tidbit from his daughter.
After the Revolution certainly has history and politics on the brain, but Herzog is smart enough to keep the focus on family rather than polemics. And at the Caldwell Theatre, where the play is receiving one of its first post-New York productions, director Margaret M. Ledford has the nimble touch and the cast to deliver on the script’s potential.
Rivera holds her own against veteran actor Gordon McConnell, who plays Ben, her bombastic, but ruffled father, and shares a terrific second act confrontation scene with her. Harriet Oser steals a few scenes as hard-of-hearing, but sharp-as-a-tack Grandma Vera and Nancy Barnett, former managing director of Florida Stage, returns to acting after many years with an impressive performance as Ben’s apolitical, earthy second wife.
The second act could stand some trimming and the play ends more with a whimper than a bang, but you will care about these characters and empathize with the crises they face.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION. Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Nov. 20. Tickets: $38-$50. Call: (561) 241-7432 or (877) 245-7432.