Hairspray Live! stage show but cut and only used in the film, was not added. (An instrumental version of the song is, however, heard very briefly as a bit of background music.) In addition to adapting the book, Fierstein reprised his performance of Edna Turnblad from the Broadway musical; Greenblatt felt that his performance of Edna was "iconic", and that his involvement with "Hairspray Live!" made it "come full circle". NBC cast the lead role of Tracy Turnblad through an open call in New York City, hoping to repeat the "phenomenal discovery" of Shanice Williams for "The Wiz". The role went to
The Ball (play) simply a mistake, a point of confusion by the publishers: "The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France," a Chapman play that had been revised by Shirley, was printed in the same year by the same house. Traditional critics sometimes complained about the frothy amorality of "The Ball" — judging it to display a "coarseness...unflattering" to the social set depicted. Yet Herbert's adverse reaction to the accuracy of the play suggests that even the revised version may have a certain journalistic quality, showing what the Court of Charles I was actually like. "The Ball" portrays people of fashionable society preparing for