"OK, so the new musical “Hairspray” doesn’t offer a cure for cancer, or the nose-diving Dow for that matter, but if the infectious jubilation currently spritzing from the stage of the Neil Simon Theater were bottled and sold across the country like, say, hairspray, consumer confidence would not be a problem. Certainly this sweet, infinitely spirited, bubblegum-flavored confection won’t be lacking for buyers any time soon. Arriving in an aerosol fog of advance hype, it more than lives up to its promise.

The retro R&B score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman is full of toe-tapping, tongue-in-cheek gems. Relative newcomer Marissa Jaret Winokur and a positively beatific Harvey Fierstein, in drag and very much at home center stage, are perfectly matched as a daughter-and-mother team fighting for the rights of people of color and the dignity of girls of girth. And the production has been lavishly festooned with endearingly goofy touches supplied by virtually everyone involved, from book writers Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, who have cooked up a deft blend of sweetness and silliness, to director Jack O’Brien and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who keep pelvises twisting at a peppy pace throughout, to set designer David Rockwell and costume king William Ivey Long, happily camping out on the borderline of kitsch. In short, “Hairspray” should give Broadway just the booster shot it needs as it heads into the fall season after a bummer summer."

- Charles Isherwood, Variety