Play Review: Play Analysis

HAIRSPRAY is a musical, originally written by John Waters as a movie and later adapted for the stage with music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman, and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan. The play features major themes of racism and beauty standards. All of these issues are portrayed through major satire and stereotypes, in order to provide comic relief, but also insight into the true issues being addressed. I had done the play previously without understanding the importance of being true to the stereotypes. Doing the play again, I was able to realize how important it is to allow yourself to be offensive to get the point across. I also realized that I had internalized the idea of expurgated offensive things instead …show more content…
Also, pausing for laughter was a great feeling because you knew when you delivered a line or played the part well. Sometimes I was surprised because the audience found things funny that I had not recognized as humor during rehearsal. Performing HAIRSPRAY was very beneficial to the Mercy community because it allowed us to talk about issues that we are not usually allowed to talk about. While Catholic school does allow some form of thought beyond just having to agree with what everyone says, there is still censorship. Sometimes the censoring is just because there is not time to talk about it in class, or students are too busy to start a movement, and sometimes just because there is underlying prejudice. You can see the prejudice in how we put people into categories and think they’re all the same and we do not even bother to know their name in a school that’s barely 400 people. You can see it in how we have such great diversity in our school but there is still the “White” crowd and the “Black” crowd, even though they are not actually separated by race but by GPA. You see it in how the majority of Honors or AP classes have mostly white people. You see it in how administration treats white students differently than black students because of that. You see it in how a black student does not really matter to certain teachers unless …show more content…
I love the adaptation from movie to stage because it was smoothly transitioned itself into a musical with great music and the same sort of plot but improved from certain irrational cliches like when Tracy passes out in the movie and immediately upon waking is asked by Link to go steady with him (Hey, little darling, you might have a concussion and be unable to answer with full mental capacity but will you be my girl”). The tradition of casting Edna as a male being kept is very enjoyable. One plotline I wish was in the musical from the 1988 movie was how Prudence forced Penny to see a psychiatrist so he could brainwash her into liking white boys. That plotline could have added so much to the play and to the relationship between Penny and her mother. I think that there could have been more push to recognize the ignorance of psychiatrists and treating mental illness. Today, many are quick to diagnose differences as mental illness and I wish that could be something we addressed more. The adaptation from the musical to the 2007 movie musical was not as great as the transition from the 1988 movie to musical. The scenes were poorly blocked, such as Link not being anywhere near Tracy during “Without Love” but instead in her bedroom, rather creepily. Link was given more of a personality in the movie which was good and very enjoyable. My favorite rendition of the story is the musical because of the great plot, music, and

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