HAODS hits the Horsham stage with Hairspray

“I did some directing at drama school and since then I've been really lucky to be on stage. I've done tours and I've done the West End and I've done some pretty cool things but I've got a two-year-old son now and I was thinking that learning lines takes time. And then this came up. I have a friend who often musical directs and he said ‘Adam, HAODS are looking for a director for Hairspray!’ And I just thought ‘Wow! What a show that would be to work on!’ so I applied and after a few meetings they said yes.

“It is just such a fantastic show which sends out all the right messages. You're talking about diversity and inclusion and you're talking about representation on stage and you're talking about representing the heart of musical theatre, and it's a really great feel-good show. I consider myself an ally for the LBGT community and when the BLM movement happened, I was right behind it. And with this story we have got to make absolutely sure that we are telling the story absolutely right and sensitively in the context of all the ethnicities and of all that is happening.”

In preparation, as Adam says, it was right to take a look again at the film, to see the Hairspray Live version which is a studio recording in effect: “You've got to look at the other versions of the production but you have also got to come at it fresh. We've got to make our own decisions and we've got to work with what is available. We are an amateur society. We're not going to get Ariana Grande or Michael Ball or John Travolta but I'm just incredibly lucky that the guys that I've got are just incredible.

“If you look at the story from a really 2D angle then the story is that Tracy Turnblad is wanting to get to dance on the Corny Collins Show, and of course that's where it starts but it's an incredible journey that she goes on, meeting all these wonderful people and learning about racial segregation and wondering why it happens. She's got a lovely naivete to her. She wonders why she and Seaweed can't dance together and it's because he is black. But she is able to ask the questions. She wants to know why they can't dance together. Everyone around her is shocked when she asks these questions but she really wants to know why, and she just questions it all. She absolutely doesn't see the problem in racially integrating everyone. The problem that she sees is the racial segregation.”

Adam is loving the task of directing: “It is time-consuming and it is difficult but I'm loving every second of it. I'm really lucky to be be in the room with these fantastic like-minded people, and we are going to be educating the people of Horsham about what these people at that time went through. It is also going to be about entertaining people and I just hope that people will come out really buzzing but also I hope they will have learned something. I hope they walk out of that theatre and say ‘Yes, I understand things a little bit more now.’

And yes, Adam is partly wishing he were on the stage performing in it as well: “We did a partial run and I said to one of my MD's ‘I am a little bit jealous of these guys out there!’ But the cast is so great and the tickets are really selling. It is going to be great.”