Sunday Showtunes

A shower and a Lotto purchase later (I WON the New York Lottery! Two dollars), I headed over to 45^th Street to the Marquis to see the show I was looking forward to the most on this trip, “Cry Baby,” the second musical (after “Hairspray”) based on a John Waters film.  I saw the film long ago when it was in the theatres, but I can’t remember it very well, and I didn’t have time to watch the movie before I saw the show.   I didn’t mind seeing it “fresh” however.  It’s still in previews (I was nosy and checked out the production table in the back of the house to see what notes they had gotten today), having arrived in town from its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.  Several changes in song and tone have been made along the way.

Let me start by just saying – I absolutely loved it!   I hope it has a great opening and is a big hit.   Why shouldn’t it be?  It’s fun from the rockin’ Overture (which features musical places in which the musicians bark commands at the audience in rhythm – “Turn off your cell phones!….Unwrap your lozenges!”) to the exit music, which also gives instructions to the audience:  “Get home safe!…Get some sleep!….Watch your cholesterol!”  The performances are great, the timing and direction are tight, clever, and slick, the physical production is impressive, it’s entertaining as hell.   It has Harriet Harris, the evil Felicia from “Desperate Housewives,” who gets all the funniest one-liners.  What’s not to love?  I can’t wait to read the reviews.  Here’s mine!

It’s set in 1954 Baltimore and is sort of a predecessor to “Grease”, except it’s more twisted and satirical than “Grease.”  It shares some credits with the other John Waters-based musical, “Hairspray” (book writers and several actors), and since both are Waters rock and roll shows based in period Baltimore it invites obvious comparisons.  However, “Cry Baby” is not as weighty as “Hairspray” in terms of moral issues, and it’s considerably more demented and twisted.   Although I love “Hairspray” for so many reasons, I feel that this is finally the first “John Waters” musical on Broadway, since “Cry Baby” has more of his sensibility.  Looking at the song list gives you an idea of what kind of tone the night promises:  titles include “The Anti-Polio Picnic,” “Watch Your Ass,” “I’m Infected,” “Squeaky Clean,” “Nobody Gets Me,” “Screw Loose,” “Baby Baby Baby Baby (Baby Baby Baby),” “Girl, Can I Kiss You with Tongue?” (Featuring the lyrics “It can swish, it can swirl, it can twist, it can curl, it can tickle the top of your lung”), “Misery, Agony, Helplessness, Hopelessness, Heartache and Woe,” “Jailyard Jubilee,” “Thanks for the Nifty Country!”, and “Nothing Bad’s Ever Gonna Happen Again.”  That last number is a masterpiece of satire, taking Rodgers and Hammerstein's blue-sky optimism to stratospheric extremes, but the tone echoes all those Elvis Presley vehicles in which a swinging outsider rocks Middle America Values.  In fact, the score is a clever concoction of rock-a-billy music (early 1950’s country/blues-based rock and roll, before it became the style that “Grease” pays homage to) and 1950’s style spoofy ‘show music’ along the lines of “The Producers” without the self-referentialism of “Producers,” “Spamalot,” “Xanadu,” etc. that is so popular today.  The tone is tongue-in-cheek and spoofy (sort of like a Zucker movie such as “Top Secret!”) but is played completely without “winking” although it sends up the period very cleverly.

It’s a very simple story with a clichéd conflict, involving an orphan boy and girl from opposite side of the tracks rebelling against square society.   The opening scene (the Anti-Polio Picnic Carnival social) sets up the two worlds brilliantly, and I haven’t laughed so much during an opening number since “The Producers.”  In fact I can’t remember a musical since that I have laughed at so much throughout.  “The Anti-Polio Picnic” is a clever parody of big social-event songs such as "Carousel's" "Real Nice Clambake." "If you value the use of your legs, you've come to the right spot," the grandmother gaily announces with typical John Waters “funny/cringe” cheerful humor.

Our hero is “bad boy” delinquent Wade Walker, sarcastically nicknamed “Cry Baby” because he cried when his parents were executed as Commie spies and refuses to cry since (“I have complete command / of my lachrymal gland,” he sings).   When the “bad kids” crash the polio carnival (“You’re turning this Carnival into a circus!” shrieks the horrified host), Cry Baby meets society girl Allison, whose parents were killed in a “freak croquet accident,” and the two are drawn together like electromagnets.   “I’m a good girl, but I don’t want to be,” she tells him, and before you know it she’s crossed over to the other side of the tracks to join the gang, which are a collection of freak shows and outcasts.  One girl, called “Hatchet Face” because she’s so ugly, is fond of yelling at people, “I’m ugly on the INSIDE, too!” and brandishing a switch blade.  A loony bin case named Lenora is completely obsessed with marrying Cry Baby – she sings the song “Screw Loose” and nearly stops the show with it.  It’s a complete Patsy Cline “Crazy” spoof – the twist being, she is literally crazy.

The show has many clever touches and it’s great to see a new show with creative and intelligent ideas, down to the set design.  When the show inhabits the world of the Squares, the arches are, predictably, well, square. But, when the action shifts to the realm of the “bad kids,” the sides and top of the frame literally shift and tilt. Suddenly, the audience is looking at the stage at a slant. It is literally a shift in our perspective --with all the emotional connotations that implies – and it is nothing short of inspired.

When Cry Baby and Allison fall in love during the Anti-Polio Carnival, they sing “I’m Infected” which compares falling in love to a contagious disease – and if that’s not already funny and subversive enough, they do it while the boys and girls are seen lining up behind them lowering their pants and getting polio vaccination shots in the ass!  (And this is AFTER everyone has been warned by the party crashers in the previous number to “Watch Your Ass”).  Later, at the ritzy country club, an entire dance number is done in gold “designer gas masks” (remember this is set during the Cold War and the idea of Communist infiltration of America weaves through the satire of the period).

There’s lots more fun and surprises before all is resolved and we are assured that “Nothing Bad’s Ever Gonna Happen Again,” but I’ll stop here and just say that “Cry Baby,” pound for pound, was the best show of the trip. As the ads say, it’s such a rockin’ good time, you’d have to be a Commie not to love it!

KSHO broadcasts to the Mid-Willamette Valley in Western Oregon.
Among the communities served are Albany, Corvallis, and Lebanon.