CLOSED NOVEMBER 12

Photo Courtesy of Isaac Hernandez

Producing Director Otto Layman, now in his 22nd year as head of the Performing Arts Department at Santa Barbara High School announced today the Santa Barbara High School Theatre season, leading off November 3, 2017 with CRY BABY, the “prequel” to HAIRSPRAY set in 1950’s Baltimore.  With a national reputation for musical theatre innovation at the highest level, Santa Barbara High School will once again to not one, but TWO musicals this year, in addition to the return for its 18th presentation of the student produced and directed Broadway revue MUSIC OF THE NIGHT.  In the Spring SBHS is delighted to announce the production of GUYS AND DOLLS, the Frank Loesser/Abe Burrows masterpiece of musical theatre based on the stories of Damon Runyon. Noted critic Brooks Atkinson stated, "we might as well admit that Guys and Dolls is a work of art. It is spontaneous and has form, style, and spirit." while John Chapman wrote of it, "In all departments, Guys and Dolls is a perfect musical comedy".

This jumping, jiving Tony nominee is a rebellious teen comedy event! Based on the cult classic, 1990 John Waters film, Cry-Baby features a delightfully demented book from the writers of Hairspray, Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan and a rockabilly score from, David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger, the co-founder of Fountains of Wayne and the executive producer of "The Daily Show." 

It's 1954. Everyone likes Ike, nobody likes communism and Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker is the coolest boy in Baltimore. He's a bad boy with a good cause – truth, justice and the pursuit of rock and roll. Cry-Baby and the square rich girl, Allison, are star-crossed lovers at the center of this world. Fueled by hormones and the new rhythms of rock and roll, she turns her back on her squeaky clean boyfriend, Baldwin, to become a "drape" (a Baltimore juvenile delinquent) and Cry-Baby's moll. At the other end of the topsy-turvy moral meritocracy of 1954 America, Baldwin is the king of the squares and leads his close-harmony pals against the juvenile delinquents, who are ultimately arrested for arson, sending the drapes all off to prison. It's Romeo and Juliet meets High School Hellcats.
Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal wrote that "the new John Waters musical, is campy, cynical, totally insincere and fabulously well crafted. And funny. Madly, outrageously funny.”