A special congratulations to book writers Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan and song scribes David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger for maintaining John Waters' raunchiness in the musical, Cry-Baby. Add to that Rob Ashford's highly suggestive choreography and Mark Brokaw's blatant direction. Baltimore, the year is 1954. Black and white TV, Bill Haley and the Comets, Eisenhower, "I Love Lucy", B-47s, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Eddie Fisher, The Chords and The Cordettes were all a part of the scene. It was a time when the kids got their first polio vaccine. Cry-Baby opens with "The Anti-Polio Picnic" as the students, good and bad, get their shots. Those bad kids come right back with "Watch Your Ass." The good boys, in a quartet, sing "Squeaky Clean." complete with product placements. There is even a Lucky Strike and a Chicken-Pot-Pie costume.
With shades of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene and West Side Story's bad gang / good kids, Cry-Baby cries out for an award for the most brazen offering of the season. The audience, and this reviewer, loved the production. It is facepaced, almost all music and dancing, with fighting and love thrown in for variety.
It all begins with an overture that sets the tone with upbeat driving music and vocals that offer the following commands: "Take your seat," "Cell phones off." The exit music includes the lines "Drive carefully" and "Sleep well."
Set in Mrs. Vernon-Williams, Harriet Harris, recently of TV's "Desperate Housewives," leads her band of goodie-two-shoes kids. Alas, she has her own dark side as we discover in her second act song, "I Did Something Wrong . . . Once."
As in the teen class warfare, good and bad join when goodie Allison, sweetly played by Elizabeth Stanley, and ruffian Cry-Baby, not so toughly played by James Snyder, get together to sing "Let's Disappear." Then, with the ensemble, they get together on "Can I Kiss You...?" (Those three dots stand for "with tongue.") Of course, the baddies have to end up in the hoosgow for "Jailyard Jubilee."
The music rocks, helping make Cry-Baby a study in motion. Choreographer Rob Ashford's dances are unbelievably energetic and often quite suggestive. The fight scene is delightfully stylized.
Director Mark Brokaw keeps his actors busy, even when far upstage and hardly seen. The excellent sets, by Scott Pask, fly and slide, often to the music. In a pond scene, the rocks kids are making out behind seem real. Each set change is as choreographed as the dances. In fact, the action never stops or slows down, so that scene changes become a part of the show.
Cry-Baby probably doesn't have any socially redeeming qualities; after all, its grandfather was John Waters. What it does have is charm (in a weird way), outstanding dance, wild dialogue, a great cast, audience appeal, and two hours of plain raucous fun.
