| . | 04/18/2009
Hair
By: Jeannie Lieberman
Following is a review written of the Central Park production last summer. There have been some changes, some subtle, some obvious in the Broadway production.
The most immediate is the indoor setting in which Scott Pask’s brick wall, with some industrial looking fire escape structure and a military truck, replaces the natural Central park setting. This in effect condenses the show dramatically, thrusting it forward, its in-your-face attitude intensified, as does Acme Sound Partners’ surrounding amplification which wraps the audience in the famous Ragni/Rado/MacDermot score.
The intimacy of the theater allows director Diane Paulus to send her exuberant cast (led by Sasha Allen, Allison Case, Gavin Creel, Crissie Levy, Darius Nichols, Bryce Ryness, Kacie Sheik and Will Swenson) racing up and down the aisles and into the boxes above with marathoners’ endurance and sprinters’ speed, thus assuring increased involvement from the very willing audience. Although the staging has tightened there are still some lapses in this relentlessly youth oriented, rebellion driven opus, and its serious anti-war message is a relief when highlighted.
Also of interest is the change from pro-war Bush to anti-war Obama which somewhat mitigates the show’s message:
If you are old enough to remember the original, as I am, two things will probably happen : you will think the Public Theater’s new production at the Delacorte theater in Central park, the PERFECT setting for this play which takes place in Central Park, lacks the original’s energy – that is a given – no revival can approximate the enthusiasm of first viewing (or first anything) – even if it actually does ( this one doesn’t…I think), the second is that it seems dated (actually it IS dated, duh, because it is 41 years old).
Seemingly lifted right off the hippie movement of the streets, it opened in 1967 at the downtown Public Theater with book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado (who was mingling with the crowd in his best hippie clothes), and music by Galt Macdermot (with whom I worked a few years ago trying to produce a new musical of his called Sun, a work of whimsical innocence, too late for its time) with its snippets of forty (!) songs, some becoming hippie anthems. The show briefly moved to an uptown venue and then, loosely recreated by director Tom O’Horgan a year later, it ran on Broadway for 1750 performances.
The show transports us right back into the age of “Aquarius” and the tribe led by Berger (Will Swenson) who cannot keep his pants on, and various members who launch into a litany of songs about drugs “Hashish”, “Ain’t Got No Grass”, “The Stoned Age”, race “Colored Spade”, “I’m Black”, “Black Boys; White Boys”, sex “Sodomy”, “Going Down”, “Hare Krishna” and anti-war politics chanting “Hell No, We Won’t Go” “Peace, Love, Freedom, Now” “When Will the Killing stop?” and the chants “LBJ, IRT, USA, LSD, SDI”.
Perhaps youthful rebellion is a constant but never so creatively expressed as during this turbulent era. However, the in-your-face, us against everybody, rebellion of the flower children – with their painted faces, beads, wild hair, naked bodies, random sex (one cringes reflexively in this age of AIDS), unwashed appearance and self indulgence, “if you can see my eyes my hair’s too short”, could be perceived as irritating and idiotic now. The gratuitous brief nudity, so sensational for its time, was not erotic or remotely shocking (as it was meant to be then). That we have no compulsive draft, as did all 18 year old males then, also mitigates some of the show’s impact.
Under Diane Paulus’ direction and Karole Armitage’s choreography, the production was clunky with performers often just standing around, and/or being “energetic” and one sensed that the frenetic cast was imitating rather than experiencing the feelings they represented. But the performers all do yeoman like jobs. Of particular appeal was a song “Frank Mills” by Crissy (Allison Case) about a boy she met and is still looking for, an exquisite glimpse into adolescence, plain and simple and having nothing to do with the rest of the show.
To examine the show as a “musical” is to do it an injustice- the sum is greater than its parts. The plot alone is so weak as to be nonexistent except as it builds to its point – the needless sacrifice of young lives to a victory-less war. As succinctly put: “White people sending black people to fight against yellow people to defend the land they took from the red people”.
Act I ends with an onstage “Be-In”, via the show’s first significant scene where the conflicted Claude (Jonathan Groff) waivers and then goes against the urging and practice of his friends to burn his draft card with the knowledge that this is government property with penalties, (“Where Do I go?”) and his parents’ instilled ideas of honor and duty.
Act II ends with an actual “Be-In” with the show’s most enduring and stirring numbers: the tribe’s exuberant “Good Morning Starshine”, then sobered by the return of Claude, another dead soldier, epitomizing the reality they are fighting. The cast gathers in homage to mourn “Eyes Look Your Last” and then segues to the show’s almost defiant, undeniable anthem of irrational hope, “Let the Sun Shine In” which brought tears to my eyes as I stood up, joined in on the top of my lungs and swayed with the audience. I “got” it!
I left with much of the audience, dressed in their hippie clothes, dancing exuberantly onstage with the cast and thought how happy Joe Papp would have been to see his vision, the union of theater and audience, come true.
AL Hirschfeld Theater, 302 West 45 (at Eighth Avenue) 212 239-6200
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