HairSpray!

So I was lucky enough to get a free ticket to see Hairspray tonight at the Neil Simon Theatre on 52nd Street. The only time I get to see B'way shows is when they are free, cause I certainly don't pay the thousands of dollars per ticket that it costs to get in. Which is really sad, because even though I hate to admit it, I love Broadway.

Luckily, Hairspray is awfully fun and I highly recommend it if you're in town and feel the burning desire to plunk down at least $65 for a show, unless you sign up for the lottery three hours before the show for the chance to get $25 tickets. (Good luck with that.) You might want to check out the TKTS booth over on 46th street also.

If you don't know about Hairspray because you've been living under a rock for the past twenty years or so, it's John Waters's 1988 movie set in 1962 about a self-confident, bubbly and chubby girl who wants to dance with both the black and white kids on the Corny Collins dance show in Baltimore. She gets the guy AND desegregates the dance shows in the space of two hours and forty minutes! Genius!

The cast included American Idol's Diana DeGarmo as Penny Pennington, who was surprisingly funny, and r & b genius Darlene Love.

I found myself tearing up for a bit when Love sang the tender showstopper "I Know Where I've Been":

There's a road
We must travel
There's a promise
We must make
'Cause the riches
Will be plenty
Worth the risk
And chances that we take
There's a dream
In the future
There's a struggle

We have yet to win
Use that pride
In our hearts
To lift us up
To tomorrow

'Cause just to sit still
Would be a sin

She sang it beautifully, and in that moment I thanked all the beings in the Universe that I got a free ticket to Hairspray and not the vampire flop, Lestat, which, according to Ben Brantley of the New York Times, is Broadway's version of Ambien, Lunesta and Sonata. Ouch!

The only truly annoying thing was all the little girls who were clamoring after two young ladies in the audience from the Disney adventure, "High School Musical." During intermission, after getting the autographs of the movie's stars, Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Anne Hudgens, the girl behind me, called not one, not two, but THREE of her girlfriends on her cell phone to brag about who she had just seen in the audience.

As a former children's librarian, I do keep up with kid's stuff, but even I had to wrack my brain about who the girls were and what movie they were in... so, in hindsight, I should retract my snarky statement about those who might not know about Hairspray. But then again, maybe I won't.

Anyway, two cheesy thumbs up for Hairspray.