Hair Raising

The tagline for Hairspray could read something like, “Your favorite movie, now a musical, now a movie, now a . . . symphony concert?” That’s right, John Waters’s beloved 1988 film about racial segregation in 1960’s Baltimore is being adapted once again—this time by the BSO—and staged January 25-27 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The kicker? Waters himself will take the stage as a narrator. “The BSO came to me with the idea, and I liked it because it was something different,” Waters says. “It allowed me to cross over into a new field—classical music and working with the symphony.” Arranged by the BSO’s principal pops conductor Jack Everly, the production is described as “a musical in concert.” Everly had the daunting task of beefing up the Broadway score for a full orchestra, and Waters will be there to add narration between scenes. “It’s all new stuff, things that haven’t been in the movie or musical,” Waters says. “It’s basically about the creative aspects of thinking up Hairspray. I ask the audience to come with me, to where I got the ideas and the inspiration for it.”