Cry-Baby

Now that the reviews are out, it's high time I add my thoughts about Cry-Baby, the latest John Waters film-to-stage adaptation that opened at the Marquis on Thursday. The show is based on the film that helped Johnny Depp on his way to stardom.

Cry-Baby is John Waters' version of the sweet naive virginal girl who falls for the bad-boy outcast. You can see it currently in the Grease revival stinking up the boards, or in a gazillion other films, television shows and plays. How does this one measure up? Right square in the middle, I would guess. It's not bad, but it's not particularly engaging either.

The musical captures much of the plot of the film, but the characters are largely bland iterations of their filmic counterparts. James Snyder is sexy, but not special as Cry-Baby. Perhaps he and the equally bland Elizabeth Stanley as Allison are really made for each other. The rest of the cast--Harriet Harris excepted--even pales by comparison.

James Snyder said in an interview that Cry-Baby is Hairspray's dirty sibling. Not really. The show would be helped immensely by more crassness and tastelessness and raunch. But this is a musical for the mainstream, and it never takes the risk to be bad.

And so, it's never particularly good either. At $54 for preview performances, it was a not unpleasant divertissement. But in the company of any of the other shows I saw that week, it was a distant last.