Pen's Nest

Tracy's mom is played by a man because John Waters wrote and directed the original film. If you know anything about John Waters, you'll understand why this means anything. He was obsessed with Divine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_(Glen_Milstead)), who was a famous drag queen. Part of it is meant to be a statement about gender roles and sexuality; since the movie is primarily about prejudice of various sorts, I think the idea of having Divine play the mother was John Waters's way of saying 'fuck you' to the mainstream media in as many ways as possible.

And that's carried over into the musical because they want to honor Waters's original vision. The new movie (and the musical) is cute, but it doesn't have the same gritty punch of the original film. I think of the original 'Hairspray' as being sort of like a crack fic. It's really meant as a very serious social commentary about prejudice, and I think he wrote it as an allegory that's meant to represent the GLBT rights movement. He wrote it in the last 1980s, at the height of the AIDS scare in America when Reagan was president and almost the entire country had been brainwashed into thinking that gay = AIDS.

Anyway, that's just my interpretation. It might not be significant anymore to have the role played by a man. I also don't think John Travolta was the best choice, since he's NOT a drag queen. That takes the role away from the political meaning and sort of makes a mockery of Divine, which isn't really... yeah, I'm not fond of that.