Hairspray Live!

Baltimore, 1962. Sixteen year old Tracy Turnblad loves to dance and wants to get onto a television programme. The programme has rules about the right body and the right skin colour, and Tracy fits none of them. Once she gets on, she takes on the segregated structure of the broadcast. Alex Rudzinski and Kenny Leon direct. It was produced for NBC and broadcast live: shot in one continuous pass on 7 December 2016 and transmitted as it happened. The form is a subject in itself. The live television musical became a large scale format in America from 2013 onward, and this was among the best received; the moves between sets, the crowded dance numbers and the songs all ran without stopping. The cast includes Maddie Baillio, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, Kristin Chenoweth and Harvey Fierstein, who plays Tracy's mother Edna. Fierstein had played the role on Broadway and won a Tony for it. The chain of sources is long: John Waters's 1988 film, the 2002 Broadway musical made from it, the 2007 film made from the musical, and this live broadcast. Who it is for: musical audiences and anyone curious about the live television format. Who it is not for: the tension of live transmission is visible, the sound mix falters in places, and comparison with the film version's cast is unavoidable.