San Diego Arts

"Cry-Baby" at the La Jolla Playhouse

Another Big Musical Hit for La Jolla
By Welton Jones
Posted on Mon, Nov 19th, 2007
Last updated Mon, Nov 19th, 2007

Remember how superior we all felt that, thanks to the La Jolla Playhouse, we got to see “Jersey Boys” first?

Well, get out your wallet. Call 858 550-1010. Book your tickets for “Cry-Baby,” before it heads back east Dec. 16 to prepare for a spring Broadway opening.

Because, the Playhouse has done it again.

(Yes, this IS a review of the show. And no, I have never, in 49 years of play-reviewing, made such a bald-faced pitch. But I’m doing it now and I’m glad, Glad, GLAD!)

I don’t even really care much for John Waters’ weird movies, including the one that inspired this new musical. I thought “Hairspray” was a freak, successful mainly because of Jack O’Brien’s staging and a couple of eccentric performances.

But maybe I’m beginning to get the drift of Water’s whacky underdog romanticism. Or maybe the world has just evolved to the point that satire and sincerity merge into a soothing irony. Whatever that means.

Anyway, I have really fallen for this show, with its pushy book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan – sample dialogue: “Why must the backward be so forward?” – and its dandy folder of genre songs by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger.”

Forget the tunes. (You will anyway.) It’s the lyrics wherein the treasure lies. I really do intend to snatch up a copy of the published script just to be sure I heard some of these words right. Like, when discussing the title, a punky kid sings: “I have complete command/ Of my lachrymal gland.”

Every song does its job but some offer more than is really needed. And one stops the show. Well, almost. Director Mark Brokaw is too much in control for an actual interruption. But, believe me, the audience WANTED to hear Alli Mauzey float another chorus of “Screw Loose.”

OK, what’s it all about? Well, just think of “Cry-Baby” as “Grease,” with a glaze of Current Events. I mean, the show opens in Waters’ Eisenhower-Era Baltimore with an Anti-Polio Picnic Carnival that spring of 1954 when Salk made his big score and kids everywhere lined up for shots.

The stage is full of crinoline skirts and letter sweaters – Catherine Zuber’s costume designs show not only endless research but also an honest appreciation for the look and a heroic cleverness at making the stuff both accurate and appealing – until the outcast kids show up with their grease and swagger.

(“You’re turning this carnival into a circus!” complains the snooty character woman. O’Donnell and Meehan just never let up.)

Needless to say, the sexiest thug boy and the most toothsome nice girl crash into love like bugs hitting a windshield together. But many obstacles must be overcome, including more hidden secrets than Little Buttercup and the Soviet Politburo together concealed. And there’s a song for nearly every bump.

James Snyder’s character is a routine cross between Elvis Presley and James Dean except for his code of honor, a delicious Waters touch. He asks permission before he French-kisses and he won’t slug the villain in front of a lady. Though kicked around by life, he refuses to fold; the nickname “Cry-Baby” is sarcasm. Despite having to shoulder these preposterous quirks atop this stereotypical persona, Snyder is inevitably appealing and, in the limited sense of the term available here, believable.

Elizabeth Stanley, a fine, large broth of a girl, is ingénue enough to melt any tough and, like Snyder, never allows herself even a suggestion of a conspiratorial wink at the audience.

Harriet Harris, got up to resemble Mamie Eisenhower, keeps the upper classes properly represented – along with Richard Poe as a decidedly establishment judge – and Christopher J. Hanke is about the creepiest white-bread privileged kid imaginable in those days before Up With People got organized.

Of course “creepy” gets tossed out the window when Alli Mauzey is on. She imagines herself to be the destined mate of Cry-Baby and nothing will sway her conviction or that of the imaginary friends who seem to surround her. Sucking a lollipop and ignoring universal rejection, she often steers the show, single-handedly, away from the doldrums of cliche.

And she sings that song. “Screw Loose.” She even makes the crude innuendo somehow portentous. Too bad they don’t release singles from Broadway shows anymore.

Counting alternates, the cast numbers 28, at least six of whom are the ace dancers who help choreographer Rob Ashford put something new into everyone of the old chestnuts necessary in a show about Kids Back Then. I was particularly struck by the make-out scene but Ashford found freshness everywhere.

Scott Pask’s scenery achieves something similar in a decor that manages to be sardonic, tacky, mobile, specific and teasy pretty much all the time, aided indomitably by Howell Binkley’s perky lighting design.

Continuing the bountiful assets of the show, there are 14 musicians in the pit, including conductor-keyboardist-musical director-incidental composer-additional arranger Lynne Shankel, who moved everything right along. It’s a testament to her work, to the arrangements of Christopher Jahnke and the dance arrangements of David Chase – believe me! – that I don’t remember anything of the music except that it always worked.

Which leaves director Mark Brokaw, able to leap tall cliches with a single bound. Staging something like this can easily turn into a ritual but, like so much of the creative elements in this extraordinary effort, Brokaw’s staging always follows the path that refreshes.

A personal note: I too was graduating from high school that spring of 1954, in Texas, not Baltimore, but certainly inside the same uptight world. Cry-Baby and I were born the same year.

I could zing some anachronisms. (Somebody says “beatnik,” a term that wasn’t invented until four years later, when Sputnik and the Beat Generation had happened.) But it’s much more important to assure everyone that, no matter how preposterous the plot, the spiritual atmosphere of this show is, well, close enough to harbor plentiful delights.

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE

DOWNLOAD CAST LIST HERE

DOWNLOAD SONG LIST HERE

Dates	:	7:30 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturdays and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 5, 2007.
Organization	:	La Jolla Playhouse
Phone	:	858 550-1010
Production Type	:	Play
Region	:	La Jolla
URL	:	www.lajollaplayhouse.com
Venue	:	Mandell Weiss Theater, UCSD Campus, San Diego

About the author: Welton Jones has been reviewing shows for 50 years as of October 2007, 35 of those years at the UNION-TRIBUNE and, now, six for SANDIEGO.COM where he wrote the first reviews to appear on the site.
More by this author.

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Comments

Posted by Eleanor Bard	Mon, Nov 19th, 2007
Can't wait to see the show! Such an intelligent and thoughtful review.

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