![]() We’re so glad to be able to do this for him.” “Harvey’s performance demanded to be preserved,” says Meron. Costumed like a cross between Totie Fields and Dame Edna Everage, Divine’s spiritual son, Harvey Fierstein, plays Edna on “Hairspray Live!” which documents his 2003 Tony-winning performance in the Broadway musical based on the Waters film. It was female impersonator and notorious “Pink Flamingo” star Divine, of course, who first played housewife Edna Turnblad in the very first “Hairspray,” the subversively campy 1988 John Waters film that told the story of how an outsider named Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) integrates an “American Bandstand”-style show called “The Corny Collins Show” so black and white teens could dance together. But the most meaningful storefront belongs to Divine Pet Food, with the cut-out of a pink flamingo perched on the awning. Meron’s Used Cars is named for co-executive producer Neil Meron. Greenblatt’s Crabs is a nod to NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt, who greenlit the four live musicals (they also include “Peter Pan Live!” and “The Wiz Live!”) we’ve seen so far. ![]() ![]() Many of the backlot storefronts are named for people involved with the production. There, production designers have recreated a Baltimore street as it might have looked in 1962, and rather than broadcast from the Grumman Studios in Bethpage, LI, (where the network’s previously live musicals have originated) the producers will take full advantage of the balmy December weather, staging 40 percent of the production outdoors. ![]() ![]() What started out, with 2013’s “The Sound of Music Live!,” in a lower Broadway rehearsal space in New York, has evolved into a full-blown production on the Universal Studios backlot in California for “ Hairspray Live!” which premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. The live television musical has evolved into a bicoastal enterprise. ![]()
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