'Cry-Baby' has flash, wit, but no heart

By Mary Carole McCauley | Sun theater critic

April 25, 2008

Opportunity knocked last night at the door of the Marquis Theatre, where Cry-Baby is making its Broadway debut. But nobody answered.

Like Hairspray, this new musical is set in the Baltimore of John Waters' imagination. But Cry-Baby lacks the quirky lead characters who won its sassy sibling near-universal acclaim - not to mention the double fistfuls of Tony Awards.

Of course, there are many different ways to define success. The show has an offbeat script, a catchy score, appealing performances and kick-derriere choreography. Even if Opportunity has taken a hike, its close kin, Popularity and Solvency, may still be loitering nearby.

Audience members who haven't seen Hairspray may well respond to Cry-Baby's undoubted charms, ensuring that the musical settles into its red-velvet curtained home for a long run. With luck, it will recoup its $12 million investment.

But somewhere in the midst of Cry-Baby's poodle skirts and petticoats, its pie costumes and poufs, the show's heart was misplaced. Perhaps it got lost in the prop box or wedged beneath a seat cushion.

Cry-Baby is set in Baltimore in 1954 and tells of the rivalry between two groups of youths: the clean-cut Squares and the rebellious Drapes. Bad boy Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker (so called because he hasn't shed a tear since his pacifist parents were executed for a crime they didn't commit) falls in love with Allison Vernon-Williams, a bubbly, blond debutante.

Waters' original 1990 movie became a cult classic. So idiosyncratic was the performance of its star, Johnny Depp, and so vivid were the minor characters, that viewers overlooked its failings.

Baltimore's venerable Sultan of Sleaze is at heart a satirist, and he's at his best when gently mocking the comfortable middle-class environs in which he grew up. As a result, the contest between the Squares and the Drapes is curiously one-sided.

The fun of the show is watching blue-rinsed bluebloods trying to fit their secret shames and hidden temptations into, well, a square framework. The Drapes, in contrast, are pure-hearted paragons - notwithstanding an occasional joyride here or teen pregnancy there.

Cry-Baby would have been vastly better had Waters and the creative team parodied both groups. Indeed, the show comes alive at the two rare instances when that occurs: when Chester Gregory II portrays deejay wannabe Dupree (the title character's best friend) as the unlikely love child of James Brown and Little Richard. Later, in a song called "All in My Head," Baldwin (a Square) and Lenora (a Drape) do an absurd waltz with manikins representing their ideal mates.

Improving upon an earlier version of Cry-Baby staged last fall in San Diego, director Mark Brokaw and the creative team wisely emphasize the show's comic-book sensibility. In the 1950s, at least, stock heroes were the norm. Readers didn't look to the funnies for well-developed characters to whom they could relate.

Despite those corn-silk curls, Allison Vernon-Williams (the droll Elizabeth Stanley) is a bit like Veronica from Archie, a rich girl who longs to be bad. As Cry-Baby "the most popular loner in school," actor James Snyder has the pleasing baritone, swiveling hips and Brylcreemed locks of a sex symbol in the making. But peel away Cry-Baby's red leather jacket, and you'll find the electric-blue leotard and oversized white star belonging to Captain America.

That deranged duo, Thomas Meehan and Mark O'Donnell, who also wrote the book for Hair- spray, have written one of the wittiest scripts on Broadway, replete with double entendres.

The music by Adam Schlesinger (songwriter for Fountains of Wayne) and David Javerbaum (executive producer of The Daily Show) is so hummable that, five months after hearing their melodies twice, I could replay three of their songs in my head. The score is a pastiche of the sounds of the decade, from the doo-wop-inspired harmonies of the Whiffles in "Squeaky Clean," to the two-chord, rockabilly of the Drapes, as exemplified by a number called "Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby (Baby, Baby)." (When Allison is urged to join Cry-Baby in singing a duet of the latter, she protests: "But, I don't know the words.")

Choreographer Rob Ashford tosses his dancers around the stage floor as if they were in a game of pick-up sticks. Ashford does the big things well; the license-plate stomp in "Jailyard Jubilee" is as vertebrae-rattling as it was in the world premiere last fall in San Diego. But his more earthbound moves are equally impressive; "A Little Upset" is a floor-level, slinky, hip-swiveling marvel.

Some of the supporting performances are comic classics, most notably Harriet Harris as society matron Mrs. Vernon-Williams and Alli Mauzey as the love-crazed Lenora.

It's a hoot to see Harris' property society grande dame give way to her conscience against her better judgment (in "I Did Something Wrong ... Once"). Her movements reflect her inner conflict; Harris' shoulders and arms take the lead, while the rest of her body totters along helplessly in their wake.

Harris has already won a Tony, but Mauzey, who has impeccable instincts, may be a star in the making. It reportedly was the actress who decided that Lenora should have an invisible companion only she can hear. Every time Mauzey answers the voice in Lenora's head, the audience cracks up.

The Broadway premiere has retained Scott Pask's ingenious set, which tilts slightly every time the scene shifts from the picture-frame world of the Squares to the Drapes' askew universe.

And lighting designer Howell Binkley does all he can to help the cause. Binkley was, perhaps, mindful of the myriad news articles all asking the same questions: Would Cry-Baby be a runaway hit like Hairspray? Could the miracle happen again?

Perhaps that's why Binkley abruptly shuts off the lights at the Maidenhead Country Club, where Allison and the Whiffles are celebrating. There's a deafening clap of thunder, and then a dazzling burst of light. At that moment, Cry-Baby bursts through the French doors in full leather jacket.

Because of Binkley, lightning really does strike a Waters-inspired production twice. Unfortunately, the audience knows that it's all flash and powder, and not a genuine act of nature.

But you can't blame a guy for trying.

>>>If you go Cry-Baby is playing at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway, New York, through Sept. 14. Tickets are $35-$250. Call 800-755-4000 or go to crybabyonbroadway.com.

mary.mccauley@baltsun.com