San Diego Magazine / July 2004 / From and To Broadway

 Email  Print  Feed

From and To Broadway

IN JULY, WE FINALLY GET A LOCAL OPPORTUNITY to see the musical that won Jack O’Brien his long-deserved Tony Award for directing. Hairspray, which O’Brien developed at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and then took to lavish success on Broadway, plays July 6-18 in the Civic Theatre, offered by Broadway/San Diego. The national tour is selling out, even as the show continues to be a prime property in New York.

Hairspray, based on the 1988 John Waters film, is the spoofy story of a Baltimore teen in the ’50s who wants to appear on the local TV dance show. Big-haired and supersized, she becomes a sensation, then has to contend with a jealous rival and the show’s producers, who don’t want the dancers racially integrated. Including O’Brien’s, Hairspray won eight 2003 Tonys, including outstanding musical, score (by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) and book (by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan), plus virtually every critics’ award for best Broadway musical.

Among stage cognoscenti, there’s an ongoing argument over which of the hot-ticket productions, Hairspray or The Producers, is better. You’ll get another chance to compare the two in August when the latter makes a return trip to the Civic.

(Hairspray, July 6-18: Tues. & Thur. at 7:30, Wed. at 7, Fri. at 8, Sat. at 2 & 8, Sun. at 1 & 6. Civic Theatre, Third Ave. & B St., downtown San Diego, 619-570-1100; broadwaysd.com.)

WILL LUCKY DUCKMORPH INTO A BROADWAY SWAN? That’s the possibility for the revised musical comedy getting its premiere at the Old Globe in July. The show, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of “The Ugly Duckling,” hatched in 2000 in Palo Alto as Everything’s Ducky, then played in a few cities over the next year or so.

Its creators—co-authors Jeffrey Hatcher and Bill Russell and composer Henry Krieger—then saw Urinetown and decided they wanted that satirical show’s Tony-winning director, John Rando, to reshape their work. Rando has been a Globe regular for several seasons, directing The Taming of the Shrew, All in the Timing, The Comedy of Errors, A Moon for the Misbegotten and Sylvia.

Russell is co-creator of the musical Pageant, an extended sellout in 2002 for the North Coast Rep. Hatcher wrote, among other works, Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Scotland Road and Smash, all presented at the Globe. Krieger wrote songs for Dreamgirls and collaborated with Russell on Side Show. Their score for Lucky Duck features pop, R&B, gospel and old-fashioned show tunes.

Russell says about one-third of the show is new, mostly in the second act. Songs have been added and revised, he says, and the characters sharpened. It’s still about “the ugly bird who transforms into the swan, who becomes the hottest supermodel in the kingdom—and then the world falls apart.” It stems, Russell says, from his longtime question about the original fairy tale: “What happened after the swan blossomed?”

(July 10–Aug. 15: Tues. & Wed. at 7, Thur. & Fri. at 8, Sat. at 2 & 8, Sun. at 2 & 7. Old Globe Theatre’s main stage, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, 619-239-2255; theoldglobe.org.)