Review: Hairspray
THE NOSTALGIA OF THE TUFT CAP WENT WILD
The premiere of the City Theatre’s Hairspray had the ecstasy of a sports festival
The World Championships in Athletics were also reflected in the Helsinki City Theatre. They brought forward the premiere of their autumn musical Hairspray to the competition week. Helsinki would then have more to show than just a rainy stadium.
Were there a lot of sports people or tourists at the premiere? Obviously not, at least not in herds.
By the way, the European premiere of the musical, which was otherwise a hit on Broadway, did have the joy and heroism of a sports festival – it’s a good thing that the audience didn’t start tiring the waves.
At the end, the audience even jumped to their feet, applauding the creators on stage again and again. That’s quite rare in normal musical premieres.
The reason for the enthusiasm was certainly also found in the audience, where the creators of the work directly from Broadway were sitting: the world-famous musical and film composer Marc Shaiman and his lyricist collaborator Scott Wittman , and Marissa Jaret Winokur, who played the American Tracy.
The performance, directed by Georg Malvius, was also related to long-distance running. In the beginning, we saved a little. At the end, we were torn up like the last day.
The last mass dance with its songs played and radiated with such enormous energy that the viewer was almost ready to forgive the first half of the story.
The frame story is deeply and innocently amusing, a black-and-white American image of the turn of the 1950s and 60s with its racial oppression.
The story is quite nonsense. The war between blacks and whites is mixed with a pinch of love, a success story, black music and artists’ stardom, and a large dose of the commercial TV station’s Miss Hairspray competition.
And that’s not all. Mothers and teenage daughters are busy sorting things out, the authorities are trying to keep their front together under the pressure of equality and black demands for freedom.
At the end of the fairy tale, of course, real people get to see each other, black people get to dance on a white TV channel, and the world smiles at us all.
The story, which once conquered audiences as a favorite film of the 1980s, struggles hard to be retro enough, even nostalgic for some.
The most important thing is not the content. If the name of the musical were to be translated into Finnish, it would be Hairspray or Hairspray. It’s better that it wasn’t translated into Finnish.
The most important thing is that the music takes you away, the retro spirit blooms: back to sixties! The idea and design language of the musical are genuine – and old-fashioned – musical theatre.
Great and also grandiose solos, the authentic music world of the time and the humour of the whole family are not drawn with a spoon but with a ladle.
It’s the time of Kennedy hairstyles, so hairspray is used up, and mannequins are needed for it. The moment has come for the chubby girl next door, Tracy Turnblad.
So did Katja Aakkula’s moment as Tracy. He lived up to expectations, especially as the performance progressed towards its end. Aakkula, who had sung radiantly, was then also liberated in his stage expression.
The international group of several dozen performers achieved great synergy and excellence especially in their singing and dance numbers, but not all of them can be described in the same terms.
The master of theatre singing Irina Milan had once again done an absolutely brilliant job as a vocal practitioner, and the same praise can be given to both the Estonian choreographer Jüri Nael and the dance rehearsals. Accurate, functional!
Add to this the high-quality sound of the orchestra led by Lasse Hirvi , and the musical has a good time.
The expertise of a huge group of musicians made it clear that Finnish music education is top-notch today. We are starting to have more and a wider range of musical and talented stage performers. This time, however, Hanna-Liina Vösa , among others, had been borrowed from Estonia. She radiated fierce stage charisma.
The audience’s biggest favourite was the superior Gary Revel Jr., who almost virtuosically mastered the means of expression of a singer, a dancer and an actor.
The casting suited the premiere line-up well.
From the point of view of the story, the only, but not entirely modest problem, is the credibility of the conflict between whites and blacks. There don’t seem to be enough black artists in Finland to interpret the slum youth of Baltimore. The viewer can tune their imagination to the limit.
The real crowd magnets were, of course, Mikko Kivinen’s XXXL-sized mother and her husband Pertti Koivula, who managed to laugh and also delicate in their duets. Kivinen was so voluptuous and hefty that he almost stole the show in his own scenes.
A bunch of great successes could be picked from the performance, such as Mikko Leppilampi’s Link, Caron Barnes’ Maybelle impressive rips (even though her Finnish is classless), Katja Sirkiä’s horribly lovely bimbo-Amber, Petja Lähde’s Corny or Tuukka Leppänen’s believable Brad.
The visuals were hard to swallow. Ellen Cairns’ costumes and set design had a taste of effort. Nostalgia and retro spirit do bloom both in the costumes and in the polka dot-ball-grid details of the set.
However, it was as if there were some backdrops scattered on the stage. The total area of the large stage is so staggering that it also requires the set design to have the courage to step into the space in other ways than with the wit of details.
My biggest favourite of the evening is the Finnish translator Mikko Koivusalo, whose songs and dialogue speak their own cheerful and flexible language.
The Finnish translation takes a healthy distance from the “message” of the story. In rhymes, strictness does not flourish.
Although Hairspray is not the nobility of musicals, its popularity is probably guaranteed. The Swedes are already queuing up to claim their own rights.