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'Hairspray' holds its style

Locating the perfect lead actors for Hairspray's touring company was a giant step in putting together a show that reflects the verve of the Broadway original.

By JOHN FLEMING
Published January 30, 2005

[Publicity photo]

When John Pinette, center, and Keala Settle landed the lead roles of a mother and her dancer daughter in Hairspray, they brought qualities that enhanced the roles.

The national tour of Hairspray has been getting good notices, which is no surprise, since the Broadway production was a smash hit, winning eight Tony Awards. What is surprising - amazing, really - is that the two leads are making their professional theater debuts.

"It's not amazing. It's a miracle," says John Pinette, a standup comedian and movie and TV actor who hadn't been in a play since high school before he auditioned for the musical. Dressed as a woman, he plays Edna Turnblad, mother of an overweight teenager who wants to be on Baltimore's answer to American Bandstand in 1962.

Keala Settle was singing jingles and doing community theater in Las Vegas when she auditioned to play the dancing teen, Tracy Turnblad.

"I drove to Los Angeles for an open call," she says. "It was a four-hour drive in the middle of the night. I stood in line for about three hours hoping to be seen."

Settle went through eight auditions before she got the part in Hairspray, which opens Tuesday in Tampa. Born and raised in Hawaii, of Polynesian descent, she had never studied dance and knew the show only from the original cast CD. She didn't see it until she went to New York for her seventh callback.

"I just wish I could tell everybody, "Just keep going, don't ever give up with anything,' because if I can do this, anybody can," Settle says.

Hairspray composer-lyricist Marc Shaiman acknowledges that casting for the tour was "scary." After all, the actors who originated the leading roles, Harvey Fierstein as Edna and Marissa Jaret Winokur as Tracy, both won Tonys with highly idiosyncratic performances.

"For every replacement (on Broadway) or casting on the road, we have sort of had no choice but the people who are playing now," Shaiman says. "There aren't a lot of people who can play these lead roles and give to them the innocence and non-winking-to-the-audience kind of style that has to be there."

Then there's the issue of weight. Both characters are plus-sized, to say the least, modeled on the stars of the 1988 John Waters movie, drag queen Divine as the mother, Ricki Lake as the daughter.

Settle, 29, weighed almost 300 pounds when she went to the first audition. Producers asked her to lose some weight so she would have the stamina to perform the energetic part in eight shows a week.

"Now I weigh 185," says the 5-foot-2 Settle, in her second year with the tour. "I have to stay there, though, and that's a problem with all the dancing I do. I've gone below that. I've gone to about 180, 175. So I actually have a fat suit."

Pinette, 40, weighed as much as 450 pounds until he had gastric bypass surgery several years ago. Now the 5-foot-10 actor-comedian, known for his routine about being the bane of all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets, weighs 320 pounds. He has the challenge of following in the footsteps of a theatrical legend, Fierstein.

"If you try to copy Harvey Fierstein, you're going to pale in comparison," says Pinette, with the tour since September. "Harvey is unique, and he's wonderful. What you have to do is bring yourself to the part."

Fierstein, now playing Tevye in a Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, was "the most glorious mother you could ever want," Shaiman says, adding that he doesn't see Edna as a drag role.

"It's not even like Mrs. Doubtfire or Tootsie where someone is masquerading as a woman. The performer in this role is literally playing a woman, and it just happens to be an actor rather than an actress.

"John is just so funny and so sweet. He's definitely the sweetest Edna we've had."

Pinette headlined as a comedy act in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. He played the carjack victim in the final episode of Seinfeld. But singing and dancing was not part of his repertoire.

"My comic timing from standup has helped me do this part," he says. "But it's a completely different world. The choreography and the music people at Hairspray have kindly and compassionately dragged me kicking and screaming into this role. I do not have the brain of a dancer. But they do not give up on you."

The success of Hairspray, along with The Producers and The Full Monty, launched a trend to adapt movies for musical theater. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a musical based on the 1988 movie with Steve Martin and Michael Caine, opens in previews on Broadway this week.

Shaiman and his lyricist-partner, Scott Wittman, went the big screen route again in search of source material for their next show, Catch Me If You Can, from the 2002 movie about a con man. They've written the first act of the musical. It is also set in the '60s, but the composer imagines a more eclectic score than the bubble-gum pop of Hairspray.

"The '60s was perhaps the last decade where music crossed the generation gap," said Shaiman, 45. "Like on The Ed Sullivan Show, kids had to sit through Steve and Eydie and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland on the first half of the show because the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were on the second half, and vice versa. The parents heard what their kids were listening to because there was no remote, there were only three channels. Everyone in the family was at least hearing if not enjoying what the other generation was listening to. Catch Me If You Can is really jumping on that fact."

Shaiman started his career as a vocal arranger for Bette Midler, eventually becoming her musical director and co-producer. He has written scores for a wide range of movies, including Sister Act, The Addams Family, Sleepless in Seattle and The American President. His favorite was South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a bawdy take on the TV cartoon series.

"South Park was the greatest gig of my whole life," he says. "I got to write lyrics and music, arrange, orchestrate, sing. I'm even in it." He's the pianist for Big Gay Al.

Shaiman may be best known for the big kiss he gave Wittman on national TV when the two were awarded the Tony for best score for Hairspray in 2003. They have been a couple for 25 years.

"It was all unplanned," Shaiman says. "For us it was simply a moment of sheer joy. Any couple would have kissed or embraced. If we had won a refrigerator on The Price Is Right, we would have kissed. You wouldn't even have stopped to think about it if we were a heterosexual couple, and we happened to kiss as we celebrated this moment."

Hairspray opens Tuesday and runs through Feb. 13 at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. $42-$80. 813 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045; www.tbpac.org

[Last modified January 27, 2005, 09:55:03]