The only way one could hope to butcher a parody as hardened
as John Waters’ 1990 Americana campfest “Cry-Baby” — starring a
fresh-from-puberty Johnny Depp at its gyrating rocka-hillbilly core — would be
to miss the humor in its more subtle cultural jabs. But subtle in a Waters
piece could still sock us in the eye from clear across the drive-in; tucked
into the cozy La Jolla Playhouse cavity, we are positively pummeled. The stage
adaptation of Waters’ youthful “Not Another Teen Movie”-strain celebration in
1950s stereotypes was guided through all stages of production by the
strangeling himself — following up the Broadway success of his slightly
less-perverted “Hairspray” — and the new script hammers the film’s original
mocking points so hard that “Cry-Baby” even begins to parody its own parodies.

We begin, of course, at the annual anti-polio picnic, where
diseases are icky (along with UFOs, weirdos and communists) and square is the
only way to roll. But when a gazebo-crashing gang of big-bad drapes roar in
from stage right, the small get-together soon balloons into an all-company
summarization of the film’s entire first quarter, squished into a
polio-vaccination needle and rammed up our overstimulated behinds. How mean are
these greasy leather-jackets from across the tracks? “So damn mean that we
don’t like Ike!” Why does this grown baby cry? “It’s like callin’ someone curly
when they don’t have hair!” That’s right — the woeful orphan’s nickname was
born of cold irony, because one solitary tear is all his lonely left cheek will
ever wick.

Lead actor James Snyder (resembling a baby-fattened, more
flamboyant Robert Downey Jr.) may not writhe with the same knee-weakening
smolder as Johnny — hell, who could — but his stupider sexlessness allows us to
snap any last longings of belief and sit back for this upgraded parade of
bubbling superficiality, never without a few extra helpings of American cheese.
But Cry-Baby’s rock-star spasms are apparently enough to win over one
particular square in pink: the blonde-blonde Allison, played by an abrasive,
almost rubbery-voiced Elizabeth Stanley. By the time the garden-party number
has wound from its whirling class war, the devil’s-music posterboy and his
object of repressed lust are already in the throes of professing “infection”
with each other’s sudden love. It’s certainly one of the faster-moving
Romeo/Juliet relationships, but in a Pleasantville this sexually deprived, one
can’t help but get a little carried away. (So far, in fact, as to request a
slip of pink mouth-muscle later that night on a racy escape to makeout point.
Ooh la la!)

For all its inevitable exaggerations, “Cry-Baby” does
admirably dodge a few key cliches of musical theater, with some scenes reaching
a novel level of strangeness. Psycho groupie Leonora loosens one more screw
with every scene-stealing cameo, taking the lopsided Turkey Point stage for a
feverish solo and acting out her matrimonial fantasies alongside head-square
Baldwin (Christopher J. Hanke) in a brilliant bridal-shop romp. Though the
film’s original climax — Alison’s siren-steamy “Please Mr. Jailer” — is
sidestepped completely, its memory is soon stomped out by the
passive-aggressive tension of “A Little Upset,” a feat in gymnastic “Stomp” choreography
that sees a herd of pent-up inmates (“I must have woke up on the wrong side of
my rat-infested cot”) give the Wiffle cheerleaders a shackle-shattering run for
their bake-sale money.

In an overkill only musical theater could aspire to, the
Playhouse’s closing scene looks “We Go Together” from “Grease” straight in the
eye for the most obvious of all the play’s parodies, “Nothin’ Bad’s Ever Gonna
Happen Again.” As if to prove there’s no way they could have taken this Waters
business too far, the cast’s three nonwhite members skip center stage, lit up
by a glittering rainbow Ferris wheel, and declare racism a thing of the past;
“Kumbaya!” harmonizes the line of cracker-jacks behind. “That’s the moral of
the story,” the squares and drapes sing, finally finding something they can
agree on: “Everything is hunky-dory!”

“Cry-Baby” continues its run at the La Jolla Playhouse until
Dec. 15.