Theatre in Review: Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now! (New World Stages)The Hairspray ladies are receiving guests nightly at New World Stages, and if you have any affection for them or the show that launched their careers, you might want to drop into Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now! Although none were debutantes, the 2002 blockbuster put their careers on a new level. Marissa Jaret Winokur won a Tony for playing Tracy Turnblad, the plus-size dancing queen who takes a Baltimore TV show by storm. But plenty of attention was showered on Laura Bell Bundy as Amber Von Tussle, the not-so-sweet-sixteen ice princess in cahoots with her domineering stage mother, and Kerry Butler as prim, proper Penny Pingleton, who, falling for the Black dancer Seaweed, proudly comes out as "a checkerboard chick." Like everyone else in Jack O'Brien's never-to-be-forgotten production, they were perfectly cast. Many young performers making a splash on Broadway fail to leverage their success but not these show business worker bees: Winokur became a reality television star, keeping busy with guest shots (as both a personality and actress) on uncountable TV shows. Bundy starred in Legally Blonde on Broadway moving on to extensive work in television plus careers as a songwriter and recording artist. Butler has moved from one Broadway show to another, most recently Mean Girls and Beetlejuice. All three are married or partnered, with children ranging in age from kindergarten to college. And, despite their far-flung lives, all three have remained friends, as demonstrated in this chatty, friendly evening of songs and laughs. Reliving their highs and lows, they don't refrain from sassing each other, yet their obvious affection is impossible to miss. The song list is a three-part career retrospective that relies on some of Hairspray's tastiest items, including the galvanizing opener "Good Morning, Baltimore;" the mock ballad "I Can Hear the Bells" (performed hilariously with an audience volunteer stepping in as Link Larkin, Tracy's true love); and, of course, the teen lament, "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now." All three admit to showing early signs of Showbiz Derangement Syndrome, with Bundy hitting the pageant circuit at a tender age, and Butler trying (and failing) to get cast as an orphan in Annie. (I sincerely doubt she auditioned with the Donna Summer scorcher "Hot Stuff," as is alleged here, but the idea gets a laugh.) Winokur, who, in contrast, spent her youth at home stewing with frustrated ambition, offers an electric reading of "Some People" from Gypsy. (By the time Hairspray rolled around, however, she was a Broadway veteran, having logged four years in the Tommy Tune revival of Grease.) And so it goes: Bundy details her youthful stint in the Off-Broadway musical Ruthless!, watched by an understudy named Britney Spears, then offers a mashup of that musical's "Born to Entertain" with "Oops, I Did It Again." (Spears' memoir is subjected to an amusing bit of fact-checking.) Butler, who starred in the Broadway edition of Little Shop of Horrors, delights with that show's inimitable ballad, "Somewhere That's Green." She and Bundy, who passed through Wicked at one point or another, join in the heartfelt eleven o'clock number "For Good." And, with a trio of Broadway babies like these, a medley about the (sometimes dubious) joys of motherhood inevitably includes "When You're Good to Mama," "Rose's Turn," and, just for kicks, "Bohemian Rhapsody." If it's little more than a glorified cabaret act, the performers are lively, the songs are catchy, and the fun is infectious. The trio are credited as their own directors, which may account for a certain helter-skelter quality to the production; Chadd MacMillan, the sole credited designer, is presumably responsible for the extensive projection element that functions as a scrapbook of the stars' personal and professional lives. The sound system is much too loud -- these ladies have lungs! -- but, as with Drag: The Musical (also at New World Stages), I suspect this is a strategy to combat the fan noise from the projectors on the balcony rail. Manufacturers need to work on this; if it could be done with moving lights, it should be possible with video gear, too. I have no idea what a person wandering in off the street would make of Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now but, for the stars' many fans and the Broadway crowd raised on Wicked, Little Shop, and Beauty and the Beast, this is a party very much worth attending. To quote Hairspray's rousing closer, which brings down the house here, you can't stop the beat. Nor will you want to. --David Barbour 
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