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Tag: hairspray

  • You Can’t Stop the Beat: Hairspray Comes to Broadway at the Hobby

    You Can’t Stop the Beat: Hairspray Comes to Broadway at the Hobby


    More than 20 years after it first premiered on Broadway, the new North American tour of Hairspray arrives at Broadway at the Hobby Center this week and Deidre Lang plays the entertaining character Motormouth Maybelle.

    For those who haven’t seen the movie or other iterations of the Tony Award-winning musical, Hairspray is the story of Tracy Turnblad who lives in racially-segregated Baltimore in the 1960s and loves to dance. She successfully auditions for a spot on The Corny Collins Show  despite not having the svelte form of all the other dancers and risks her subsequent celebrity to integrate the show. Motormouth Maybelle is the local disc jockey allowed to host the one-time-a-month “Negro Day” at the Baltimore station.

    Hairspray won eight Tony Awards in 2003 and thanks to its music as well as the story, it has remained a popular musical traveling across the country. It was made into a film in 2007 starring a powerhouse of actors including John Travolta as Edna, Tracy’s mom. The part of the mom is traditionally played by a man which is the case in this production as well with Greg Kalafatas. “When he starts playing the role, you forget he’s a man. Because he goes in as Edna,” Lang says.

    Lang (Broadway: Ragtime, The Lion King, Tommy) went out on the first national tour of Hairspray in 2002 when, she says readily, she was a little too young to play Motormouth Maybelle. She was one of the dancers in the red dresses, The Dynamites. “I was an understudy for Motormouth and I always said, ‘One day I’m going to play this role.’ I said’ ‘ I know I’m too young for it but I said one day I’m going to come back to Hairspray and I’m going to play this role.’”

    Asked about what she likes about being tis character, Lang says: Right now in life I can kind of relate to her because she’s a mother and a mother figure to a lot of the kids in the show. I have two daughters 21 and 23. She’s very motherly and she has a lot of knowledge and she ‘s lived a lot of life and she has a lot to give to these kids.”

    Lang says she used to watch old Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly films late at night and knew from a young age she wanted to be on stage. She started taking lesson and was even accepted to Alvin Ailey whee she dropped out after six month because she got a par tin Bubbling Brown Sugar. “I never had to take a day job until the pandemic,” she says.

    “Now that I’ve lived some life I can really put some feeling into it. “She says she loves to sing the song “I Know Where I’ve Been.”

    click to enlarge

    Caroline Eisemann as Tracy Turnblad and Greg Kalatatas as Edna Turnblad and company in Hairspray.

    Photo by Jeremy Daniel

    In fact. she points out, that all the songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman are memorable. “The music is so much fun to sing. And then we have ‘You Can’t Stop the Beat’ at the end which everyone loves and everyone is up on their feet singing and dancing.”

    Why its continuing popularity?

    “This show it’s just it has something in it for everybody it’s a timeless piece starts that no matter what year it comes out, it will always appeal to people of all ages, all colors, all backgrounds. It ends up in a happy place and everybody wants to be in that happy place. “

    Performances are scheduled for June 4-9 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713- 315-2525 or visit thehobbycenter.org or broadwayatthehobbycenter.com. $35-$290.

    Margaret Downing

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  • Princess Diana Had a Secret Weapon For Keeping That Famous Bob Looking Good All Day

    Princess Diana Had a Secret Weapon For Keeping That Famous Bob Looking Good All Day

    Though Princess Diana’s famous style looked effortless from a distance, she did have some help in achieving her look from a team of beauty professionals, including hairstylist Richard Dalton, who worked with her for more than a decade. According to cosmetic chemist Sheree Ladove Funsch, Dalton took great pains to ensure Diana’s hair looked great, and that meant requesting a custom hairspray formula. 

    Now the CEO of her family-owned cosmetics manufacturing company, LaDove Inc, Ladove Funsch was in her early 20s when Dalton reached out with Diana’s specifications. “She didn’t want anything that would make her hair look glued down because she was so young and so beautiful,” she told Page Six. “She didn’t want … a helmet-head kind of look.” 

    Diana, Dalton, and Ladove Funsch wanted to design something with strong hold that would leave a light finish in her feathered hair, and it required a bit of scientific ingenuity. “We found this gum resin from a tree and that’s how we were able to create this formula,” she said. “I was literally in [the lab] formulating myself, figuring out what’s the melting point of this resin, how do we get it so that it’s not so sticky and tacky? How do we get it so that it doesn’t harden?” After some “trials and tribulations,” the trio called the finished product her “Helicopter Hairspray”—because the gust from the blades wouldn’t ruin her style.

    Ladove Funsch would go on to make another version of the hairspray for the princess, this one specially formulated to avoid leaving residue on jewelry, including the tiaras she might wear for a special occasion. “When she would wear a tiara, you’re talking about millions and millions of dollars of jewels on her head,” she said. “We had to create something that wasn’t as potent as a hairspray but that would still give her a bit of hold.” 

    Ladove Fusnch also told Page Six about the one meeting that she and Diana had at Kensington Palace. “It was in England and it was incredible. I got a big hug from her and it was just magical. And there was no press, so it was just a beautiful moment,” she said. “The first time, you feel so intimidated. Here’s this, like, American business girl … coming into [her career] and she was just so welcoming and so calming and loving and just very kind.”

    Hairstylist Dalton, one of three who worked with Diana during her time in the public eye, has also opened up about his approach to working with the princess and her famous hair in a 2018 interview with Town & Country. “Whatever I did to her hair became front page news,” he said of his decision to cut her hair very slowly. “We had to be very careful. We had to do it one-fourth of an inch at a time over several weeks.”

    Listen to Vanity Fair’s DYNASTY podcast now.

    Erin Vanderhoof

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  • Jenny Slate on Her Critics Choice 2023 Look and ‘Marcel the Shell’ Poignant Makeup Moment

    Jenny Slate on Her Critics Choice 2023 Look and ‘Marcel the Shell’ Poignant Makeup Moment

    It’s Friday afternoon in Los Angeles, during the brief lull between the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, and Jenny Slate is detailing her red carpet preparations. “Right now, I’m eating an everything bagel in my car. Super glamorous!” the actor says by phone, as an electronic trill announces that she’s shifted into park. 

    A facial with Natura Bissé notwithstanding (“A gigantic luxury—I’m very happy about that”), this is not the moment for the laid-back pampering one might expect for a woman tied to two celebrated movies. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, a Critics Choice nominee for best animated film, is the product of her decade-long collaboration with co-creator Dean Fleischer Camp, with Slate voicing the winsome one-inch-tall protagonist. She also turns up in awards-season darling Everything Everywhere All at Once, playing an athleisure-clad regular at the laundromat. Maybe, in an alternate reality, Slate is sipping kombucha after yoga and a lymphatic massage. “But right now, I am the mother of a two-year-old who has jet lag,” she says, recalling daughter Ida’s 4 a.m. request for yogurt following the Globes. “It feels like I’m just folding the awards into my life,” she says. A master of her multiverse: “It definitely does all fit.”  

    Skin prep comes first for makeup artist Kirin Bhatty, who used Violette’s Boum-Boum Milk with a gua sha tool before applying metallic rust tones on the eyes (Yeux Paint in Rose d’Aurore and Marron Glacé). Bisou Balm in Bêtise simulated a “just bitten” lip, Bhatty says.

    By Sami Drasin. 

    Hairstylist Nikki Providence relied on IGK’s Good Behavior balm and smoothing spray to finesse the side-swept waves. “Since it was a torrential downpour off and on all weekend, they were life savers,” says Providence.

    By Sami Drasin.

    Slate has a soft spot for the Critics Choice Awards. In 2015, she took home the event’s prize for best actress in a comedy, for her role in the oops-pregnancy movie Obvious Child; five years later, her debut comedy special, Stage Fright, earned a nomination as well. “It’s the actual critics who have watched everything, who write in depth about all of these projects, and it is immensely important to be honored by them,” says Slate, who earmarked a dress by Olivier Theyskens for this weekend’s ceremony. It’s one of the designer’s couture-level exercises in sustainability, composed entirely of fabric swatches—in this case, gold and metallic olive and snippets of magenta—that he has accumulated over the years. “I love a turtleneck, always have, and while it’s very tight on the body, it also still somehow shows restraint,” she says. “To me, it feels like maybe my most powerful look yet.” 

    The Olivier Theyskens dress, revealing its weightless quality.

    By Sami Drasin.

    A moment with stylist Monty Jackson.

    By Sami Drasin.

    The team getting Slate ready on Sunday evening serve as longtime confidants: makeup artist Kirin Bhatty and hairstylist Nikki Providence above the neck, stylist Monty Jackson below. “He’s seen me very naked one million times,” Slate says with a laugh. “He really works not just with my figure and what I think is stylish, but also with my emotions.” It’s a cherished quality, given that the stakes of the occasion are higher than another fancy night out. “When you’re [dressing for] your own birthday party, you don’t really think about whether the entire internet is going to tell you that you looked either very good or very bad or somewhere in between.”

    Backyard sunlight picks up the metallic glimmers in the dress and makeup.

    By Sami Drasin.

    Laura Regensdorf

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  • Hot Girl Hacks To Make Being A Girl Easier

    Hot Girl Hacks To Make Being A Girl Easier

    TikTok has seriously changed our lives. I’m constantly convinced to buy products based on a short video some random influencer shot in her bedroom. There’s a continuous flow of information being thrown our way via one video-based social media app.

    When you think about it, it’s weird. We trust all these people – who we know nothing about – to dictate what’s trending and which products are worth our money. On the other hand, it’s the most accessible app out there.

    Almost everyone has TikTok, and ol’ schlub can go viral. Unlike Instagram, the niche aspect of TikTok gives you the chance to see anyone’s post – not just who you follow.

    And as such, we’re exposed to a lot more information than we normally would be on social media. This unique experience has transformed us into docile consumers – eager to listen and try for ourselves.

    However, my favorite TikTok phenomenon is the life hack section. I love it when I find a way to make my life easier. After all, my time is of the essence and so is yours.

    If there’s one thing I learned from my days of watching Gossip Girl, I know that Hot Girls are constantly on the go. Looking prim and polished does not come easy, and there are often many tears shed in the name of beauty. Beauty most definitely is pain.

    Think about the cuts on the backs of our heels and aching feet from wearing high heels all night. That annoying rip on your fresh pair of tights. The appearance of dry, cracked lips at all hours.

    I feel like I’m in a constant loop of finding the best makeup trend, hair dying technique, and body hair removal. Like I said, being a girl is hard freaking work. It’s daunting, exhausting, borderline criminally insane work.

    But with the rise of TikTok, all of these issues are answered. Girls come out of the woodwork and onto my FYP to tell me the solution to even the simplest of problems. They call them “Hot Girl Hacks” and I’m all ears every single time.

    I wouldn’t be anywhere without TikTok clueing me in on some of life’s greatest, easiest secrets. My favorite Hot Girl Hacks go as follows:

    Aspercreme For Heels

    @itsmelinavega You need ABSOLUTELY need this #musthaves #painrelief #aspercreme #fyp ♬ original sound – Melina Vega

    A spray-on can of Aspercreme can save your feet from the inevitable dull ache that comes with a six-inch feel. Generously spray all over your feet – even the bottoms – and give yourself a few minutes to numb.

    I used this for my 10 mile walking days at Coachella and my feet weren’t even screaming by the end.

    The Joys Of Hairspray

    @molchanovamua It works
    ♬ Dead Inside – Justus Bennetts

    Hairspray isn’t just meant to hold up your hairstyle. Spray it onto a spoolie for the ultimate brow glue. Or directly spray onto a washcloth for a homemade lint roller. And a tale as old as time, spray it onto tights before putting them on to prevent runs.

    Aquaphor On Everything 

    @lyss Replying to @BELLA THE FRENCH BULLDOG ♬ Sherry – The Four Seasons

    Vaseline and Aquaphor are used to lock moisture into your skin. The trend “slugging” became a popular method to lock your skincare in place and give your skin barrier an added boost.

    However, you can also use it as a brow pomade or to coat your eyelashes overnight to stimulate growth. Use the spray version to give your legs a glowy runway model shine. Just slather this all over your body for ultimate moisturization.

    Jai Phillips

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