West End primps for 'Hairspray' arrival
British cast sought for tuner
"Hairspray," the 2003 Tony-winning tuner set in Baltimore in the early 1960s, is planning a London run next fall. The aim is to open a West End stand in October 2005 at the Cambridge Theater with as much of a British cast as possible.
Production, to be staged by the show's Broadway creative team headed by Jack O'Brien and Jerry Mitchell, reps the first staging of the musical outside North America. Show has been licensed by the New York producers to Barry and Fran Weissler and Clear Channel for London.
But will so specifically American a show as "Hairspray" ignite in London, a city that can be famously inimical to Broadway hits? (A partial list of transatlantic failures -- all of which won Tonys -- includes "Contact," "City of Angels," "Tommy" and "Thoroughly Modern Millie.")
"I do worry about it," said Barry Weissler. "It's up to my staff to educate the U.K. audience about the texture of the '60s in an urban area that had heavy black/white controversy, and Baltimore is one of those cities.
"The U.K. audience intellectually understands this; I don't think viscerally they understand what we went through (in the U.S.)."
Based on the 1988 John Waters movie, "Hairspray" last month began its third year on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theater.
