NEW YORK - Hairspray just sticks to you. It's loaded with original tunes you can actually sing. It depicts and projects a '60s sensibility - screwy, a little naive, and pivotal. It's an old-fashioned musical; no zillion people sing in staccato about how they all just got off the train, in a burst of poignant urbanity. In Hairspray, people sing about cooties. (Stop scratching.)

It carries a social banner. Our national discussion about race is ongoing, probably will never end, and probably never should. Hairspray offers some proof that the discussion is a given in American life.

How else could we have a musical about a white girl trying to integrate a teen TV dance show, whose plot turns on the strength of the message from the show's single gospel-like tune? How else could Broadway's most sizzling ticket consider such broadly silly concepts as big hair, big hairspray and teenage fame, at the same time exploring a nascent TV culture that was changing American life - all while using racism as the core theme?

Some people will inevitably challenge this laugh-out-loud mixture of high-octane show dancing, high jinks, and a high-pitched representation of what is arguably America's most wrenching social issue. But A Raisin in the Sun has already been made into a musical, and Hairspray says, in a sense, that it's now OK to lighten up: your spirits, and maybe also your hair.

From the minute it became known that a bunch of Broadway talents and producers were mounting a theatrical version of John Waters' 1988 film and that Harvey Fierstein would play the role of Edna, the mammoth mommy, the buzz began. By the time Hairspray officially opened Thursday night at the Neil Simon Theatre, the buzz had long turned to howls of delight; preview audiences told everyone that Fierstein was a panic. They were not exaggerating.

Waters' Hairspray is generally called a cult film, but by the time it came out, the independent filmmaker who uses his hometown, Baltimore, as the setting for his stories was a known and admired quantity. His big leading lady was a man. The girthy, late Divine - filmdom's most famous cross-dresser and a genuine American movie curiosity - played Hairspray's mom. She was very good, but it wasn't her best work; Divine's star power came from outrageous portrayals, and the family-film appeal of Hairspray put her squarely in the confines of a G rating. Her Edna was too much a real lady, not a man playing a lady in drag. The character lacked edge.

Fierstein has no edge problem. He has better material than Divine, by far, and he knows what to do with it. When he rolls his eyes, his Edna speaks volumes, and that's not all he rolls. Laugh-lines roll off him like rain off a duck. His performance is masterful, a perfectly drawn cartoon, but with all the right human qualities. He could easily jump into a muddy river of excess, but instead Fierstein spends the entire show teetering at the edge of its banks. He is never far from wholly believable and, at the same time, he is frightfully strange. He may be the Dolly Levi of his generation.

His portrayal is aided by his Divine-like stature. Fierstein's fat-suit, under his costumes, gives him a fabulous bulk. When he bends over in one scene, his huge stage-buttocks could take flight. To quote a Phyllis Diller line from Hairspray's era, if you dressed his behind in white, you could show a double feature, side by side.

The show's evocation of Baltimore is clever, from the rowhouses that drift across the stage to the guy who moves through a song with his Esskay Franks cart. The show, in fact, is inventive throughout, and you sense from its attractive quirkiness that John Waters, who acted as a consultant, was a hands-on guy. I don't know that he himself would ever write a song about the generation gap, but the neat staging of it seemed like something he might shoot with his camera.

And imagine his smile at the oddity of a number that opens Act 2, when all the major-role women in the show - the segregationists, the civil-righters, the teens - are locked up for having caused a street melee. Their "Big Doll House" number at the jailhouse bars is funny, desperate, sultry - the perfect antidote to a stage piece like Sweet Charity's "Big Spender."

The show is fairly faithful to the movie's plot, and when it makes changes, they're for the better. Carrying all this off, with Fierstein, is a standout cast: the immensely likable, talented Marissa Jaret Winokur as Tracy, the zaftig teen celeb and civil-rights activist played by Ricki Lake in the movie; Kerry Butler as her admiring friend and Laura Bell Bundy as her hated foe; Dick Latessa, who plays her dad with the right amount of aged vigor; Matthew Morrison, her dancin'-fool boyfriend; a full-voiced Mary Bond Davis as Motormouth Maybelle, the ever-positive DJ for the black kids; Corey Reynolds as Motormouth's hip son, and Clarke Thorell as Corney Collins, the dance-show host.

A special spritz of spray goes to Linda Hart, whose performance as the TV show producer is full of fun. And though it's early in the season, I choose Jackie Hoffman for Scenery Chewer of the Year. She plays three hilarious character roles - a stringent mother, a wacky gym teacher, and a nasty prison matron - and she plays the audience like a Laugh Meter. Hoffman is not even listed among the major players, which is someone's bad decision.

I saved for last one player who is listed among the majors: Danelle Eugenia Wilson, a 15-year-old who plays Little Inez, the girl who tries to actually break the segregation policy of the TV dance show. She's sweet as can be in her first Broadway appearance, and, given that, should be the toast of Marlton, N.J., where she and her family live.