Big hair, bigger heart: Slow Burn Theatre's Hairspray is a triumph of pure, joyful humanity

By Joanie Cox Henry

You Can't Stop The Beat: One stage. One dream. And the reminder that the dance floor was always meant for everyone! The cast of Slow Burn Theatre's Hairspray has a hold on us in a big way. Photo By Larry Marano

Baltimore, 1962. The teased hair is towering, the pastel frocks are pressed to perfection, and somewhere beneath the rhinestones and the rhythm, a revolution is quietly, joyfully, irresistibly underway. Slow Burn Theatre Company's production of Hairspray, directed with enormous confidence and warmth by the brilliant Patrick Fitzwater, does not merely transport you to another era. It pulls you into its arms, spins you around the dance floor, and sends you home believing, truly believing, that the world can be better than it is.

At the center of it all is Jennifer Massey as Tracy Turnblad, and she is, in every sense, a goddess. Massey does not simply play Tracy. She inhabits her with such wholehearted conviction that you forget you are watching a performance at all. Her Tracy is funny, fierce, tender, and completely unshakeable in her belief that the world is big enough for everyone. It is the kind of turn that anchors a production and gives the rest of the company something luminous to play against.

Photo By Larry Marano

Matthew W. Korinko is an absolute delight as Wilbur Turnblad, bringing a sweetness and comic precision to every scene that makes him one of the evening's most quietly essential pleasures. His chemistry with the legendary Eric Swanson, who plays Edna Turnblad with equal parts riotous comedy and genuine tenderness, produces some of the night's biggest laughs and, unexpectedly, some of its most affecting moments. Swanson navigates Edna's arc with a deftness that is rarer than it looks, finding the heart beneath the camp without ever losing the laugh.

Toddra Brunson commands the stage as Motormouth Maybelle with the effortless authority of someone who was simply born for the role. When she delivers "I Know Where I've Been," the theater holds its breath. It's one of those perfect theatrical moments from start to finish.

The supporting ensemble is equally strong. Jessica Balton brings a perfectly calibrated awkward sweetness to Penny Pingleton, earning enormous audience affection without ever straining for it. Logan Green as Seaweed Stubbs radiates charisma and moves with the kind of electric ease that makes every number he anchors feel like a party. Chris Stevens as Corny Collins holds the show's center of gravity with an effortless charm that makes the character's eventual awakening feel genuinely earned. And MaryAnn Traxler and Gail Bennett are a study in gleeful villainy as Amber and Velma Von Tussle, respectively, two women so committed to cruelty they become, almost despite themselves, irresistibly watchable.

Rick Pena's costumes deserve their own standing ovation. The silhouettes are period-perfect and the color palette celebrates the warm, exuberant hues of Tracy's world set against the cooler, more calculated tones of the Von Tussle camp.

Nikolas Serrano's vibrant scenic design the vivid, candy-colored world it deserves.

What elevates this production above mere spectacle, though, is the clarity and sincerity with which it holds its themes. Hairspray has always been a show about who gets a place on the dance floor, and Fitzwater's production never lets you forget it. The show's message of radical self-acceptance and its insistence that every body, every person, deserves joy and visibility, land with the force of conviction rather than the softness of sentiment. In a world that still struggles with both, it matters.

Photo By Larry Marano

By the time the company launches into the final, irrepressible explosion of "You Can't Stop the Beat," the audience is not merely applauding. They are on their feet, undone in the best possible way by a show that dared to insist, at full volume and in full color, that love and inclusion are not radical acts. They are simply what we owe each other.

Slow Burn's Hairspray is the kind of theater that walks out of the building with you. And frankly, I couldn't be more thankful for that!

The show runs through April 26, 2026. Click slowburntheatre.org for tickets and more information.