Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The first Sunday of 2009 saw the closing of nine Broadway shows. It’s a safe bet that no performance was more raucous than the “Hairspray” finale after 6 1/2 years at the Neil Simon Theatre.

A smattering of celebrities -- mobile-phone cameras were trained throughout the afternoon on Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick, as well as “Today” show personality Al Roker and Tony winner Christine Ebersole -- joined a highly partisan audience that stood and cheered each entrance and number as if it were midnight at “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Onstage were the two stars who had steered the musical to eight Tony Awards in 2003 and more than $275 million in box office receipts since then: Harvey Fierstein and Marissa Jaret Winokur, as the fleshly mother-daughter team of Baltimore laundress Edna Turnblad and teen dancing fiend Tracy. Both had returned to the cast for the musical’s final weeks before shutting down after the long and lucrative run.

The feel-good show, based on John Waters’s 1988 film, is set in Baltimore in the early 1960s. Chubby Tracy dreams of dancing on -- and integrating -- Corny Collins’s local version of “American Bandstand.” To a rousing score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Tracy carries the day.

During the extended and clearly emotional finale ultimo, the cast was joined onstage by most of the creative and producing teams as well as by veterans of various “Hairspray” casts. The finishing touch was provided by Zev Miller, Winokur’s 5-month old son, born in July 2008 after the star’s life-threatening bout with cancer. Zev bounced blithely in mom’s arms.

More Closings

Three of the shows closing yesterday -- “Liza’s at the Palace,” “Slava’s Snowshow on Broadway” and “White Christmas” -- were limited engagements for the holiday season. The rest included big-budget musicals (“Young Frankenstein,” “Grease” and “13”), as well as two acclaimed plays, Horton Foote’s “Dividing the Estate” and the revival of Marc Camoletti’s “Boeing-Boeing.”

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Jeremy Gerard in New York at jgerard2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 5, 2009 10:50 EST