HAIRSPRAY, the Broadway musical by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman is a foot-stomping exploration of what is possible if you only try hard enough and refuse to allow anyone to trample on your dreams.
Last night Sackville students – who are putting on four performances this week – delivered an exhilarating show which swept their audience effortlessly along on a tide of feel-good fun.
Jess Hannam – who played plump Tracy Turnblad, a teenager determined to find fame and dance on the Corny Collins Show – was a delight.
Funny, feisty and bursting with self-belief, she opened with Good Morning Baltimore and gave a winning performance that was well-nuanced in the quieter moments of the plot when she dreamed of love.
Matt Abel, as love interest Link Larkin, had an endearing cockiness as he played to the camera and the fans, but showed his tender side in Without Love.
While Amy Collins ably caught all the cheesy showmanship of TV host Corny Collins whose racially segregated teen show forms the background to the plot.
Amber Von Tussle, the baddy among the teen stars of the Corny Collins Show, is a spiteful, over-indulged Mean Girl and Hope Fuller caught her whiny, head-tossing self-absorption to perfection.
Also outstanding was Tabatha Fagin-Adams playing her even meaner mother, Velma. Tabatha performed with such panache and confidence it is hard to believe she is still at school and not running a multi-national.
Hannah Collins turned in a lovely performance as Tracy’s bumbling best friend Penny Pingleton. Socially inept, bespectacled and with her hair in unfashionable bunches, Hannah’s transformation from gallumphing schoolgirl to confident-young-woman-in-love was one of the highlights of the finale.
Owen Jones put in a loveable – and athletic – performance as her boyfriend Seaweed Stubbs, and Hannah Pearson, as Hannah’s mother Prudy, caught the small-minded, small-town attitudes the teens were determined to fight – until love, inevitably, won her round.
A real highlight of the show was Grace Smith as Motormouth.
She gave a rousing rendition of Big, Blonde and Beautiful, but Grace’s solo I Know Where I’ve Been – an account of her struggle for racial equality – brought the house down with hugely well-deserved applause for her warm, soulful vocals.
Comic relief was very ably provided by Cei Steptoe, in the drag role as Tracy’s overweight mother Edna, and his comic timing was responsible for some of the biggest laughs of the evening.
Cei also delivered a touching duet with Sean Benson as Tracey’s dad Wilbur, as they reaffirmed their affection in You’re Timeless to Me.
But this was a show where the ensemble were responsible for delivering a host of sixties-style dance numbers and they deserve enormous credit for slick, quick performances which kept the plot bowling unstoppably along to its happy ending – as did the orchestra.
After the performance a very happy head teacher Julian Grant said how proud he was of the students who had taken part, and the professionalism they had shown in their seemingly nerveless delivery.
And in the car park afterwards, plaudits were ringing out in the darkness.
Apparently everyone agreed with Corny Collins that the cast probably were The Nicest Kids in Town.
A great show.
Geraldine Durrant
This article is used by kind permission from www.eastgrinsteadonline.com East Grinstead’s Community Website.