Reminds me of a wonderful production of Hairspray I saw that made one misguided change - making the character of Edna a crossdressing gay man ("Eddie"). The problem was that since the book really doesn't support that, it didn't make much of an impact, and whatever statement they were trying to make with it was lost in the shuffle. It just didn't matter in the long run. I think it wound up being more confusing (to those of us who knew the show beforehand) than anything else.
