When Carly Jibson, who's now playing the dancing integrationist Tracy Turnblad in the largely re-cast Hairspray, adds a blonde hairpiece to her rigid 'do so's she'll appear that much more with it, she suddenly looks like an animated shaving brush. It's a wonderful sight gag and surely unintentional. Nothing else about her performance seems the product of happy accident, however. Rampaging through the hit musical as if she were a bull on a mission, the 4'10½" Jibson holds nothing back, particularly not when she's turning Jerry Mitchell's choreography into hilarious frenzy. She revs her limbs up and vibrates to the Marc Shaiman-Scott Wittman songs until her arms and legs unwind at top s[...]

It's got a feel-good quality that stretches from here to Seattle. It's got a heart-massaging message about white brothers and sisters learning to dance with, and love, their black brothers and sisters. It's got mother-daughter bonding at odds with the parent-child animosity that more often pops out, acne-like, during a girl's adolescent years. Plus it's got a regard for the pulchritude of the plump that out-Rubenses Rubens, a parade of lively performances, roof-raising songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittmann, and choreography by Jerry Mitchell that joyfully celebrates the '60s -- not to mention the flashy-splashy sets from restaurant-famous David Rockwell, Pucci-paisley-loud costumes by [...]