by This musical adaptation by John Waters’ Comedy of Teen Rebellion in the 1950s was not a great success when it opened on Broadway in 2008. Why not? It is a delicious satirical creation: dark, silly and extremely adorable. It not only sends a genre of musicals with youthful love to the gap, from West Side Story to fat, but also Auerbian funny to Wasp-Y values and America Self-from its constitution to its sense of exceptional emotion.
This first professional production in Great Britain was long overdue, and in director Mehmet’s hands it is a cracker of a show – faster, funnier and intelligent than so much other retro musical tares in the west end.
It leads us to Baltimore, where the “squares” of the upper class with the leather cladding are in the war-or if they fulfill their hostility quite ridiculously through singing battles. The title-shaped rebel calf “Cry-Baby” Walker (Adam Davidson) in his sleeveless leather and bandana is a drape, while “Good Girl” Allison (Lulu-Mae Pears) is the place that immediately falls in love with him.
Where the 1990 film (with an electric Johnny Depp) is absurd, there is more action in adaptation. This is an America that buzzes over the atomic bomb with McCarthyistic fear and panic. The first scene contains a polio vaccination picnic and the repeated song that I have infected is not only the contagious nature of love, but also the “respectable” of America’s fear of a “sick”.
Services shine with eyebrow streams. How to do the songs by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger. The music is a very contagious mix of rockabilly, blues and swing, and texts explode with happy satire and ironies that make them laugh out loud. A small band sits on an exposed mezzanine level and creates an amazing sound.
Allison looks like Dorothy from the magician of OZ at the beginning (“My grandmother told me that I should never loosen me. It is not a upper class”), but collects tones from Rocky Horrors Janet when she dares in sexual rebellion, and pears have a fabulous vocal voice. Davidson fits her into the holism as a Cry baby despite the bathroom boy leather and is an impressive dancer.
His group also brings an exciting characterization, from pregnant pepper (Jazzy Phoenix) to “Hatchet-Face” Mona (Kingsley Morton), while Chad Saint Louis as Dupre brings the roof with songs like Jukebox Jamboree like Eleanor Walsh as Cry-Babys Stalker, with Screw Lose.
Everything is as dark intoxicating as the producers (the book is written together by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Mehan, the latter of which also wrote the book for Mel Brooks’ musical). And like the latest London production of this show, this is staged in an inventive manner in a modest room, with the actors use the entire auditorium. Chris Whittaker’s choreography – an amusingly swirling pastiche – becomes more demanding in the ensemble numbers without seeming tight.
Robert Innes Hopkins’ set design is easy on the feet, with banners like the American flag is raised and lowered for changing scenes, and the star banner that is projected on a back wall. And who can’t feel the bite of the last song, nothing bad that insists that things could not be better in America? The irony leads to gather with America’s efforts, to make yourself great again.
• In the Arcola Theater, London, until April 12th
