New York Times Review of Hair the Musical
Theater Review | 'Hair'
A Frizzy, Fizzy Welcome to the Untamed '60s
- Hair
- NYT Critic's Pick
- Broadway, Musical
- Endmost Engagement:
- Al Hirschfeld Theater, 302 W. 45th St.
- 877-250-2929
You lot'll exist happy to hear that the kids are all right. Quite a bit more than all right. Having moved indoors to Broadway from the Delacorte Theater in Central Park — where final summer they lighted up the dark skies, howled at the moon and had ticket seekers lining upward at dawn — the young cast members of Diane Paulus's thrilling revival of "Hair" show no signs of becoming domesticated.
On the reverse, they're trigger-happy downwards the business firm in the production that opened on Tuesday nighttime at the Al Hirschfeld Theater. And any theatergoer with a pulse will notice it hard to resist their invitation to join the sabotage crew. This emotionally rich revival of "The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" from 1967 delivers what Broadway otherwise hasn't felt this flavour: the intense, unadulterated joy and anguish of that bi-polar state called youth.
Yes, I know there was a musical called "13," about being exactly that age, that opened last fall, and that a lyrical revival of "West Side Story" is at present playing to packed houses only a few blocks abroad. But what distinguishes "Hair" from other recent shows about being young is the illusion it sustains of rawness and immediacy, an un-self-witting sense of the about cocky-conscious affiliate in a person'southward life.
Notice I did say "illusion." Ms. Paulus and her creative squad have worked hard at their seamless spontaneity. Karole Armitage'south happy hippie choreography, with its group gropes and mass writhing, looks as if it'southward being invented on the spot. But at that place'south intelligent class inside the seeming formlessness. And the whole production has been shaped in ways that find symmetry — and complication — in a show that people tend to recall every bit a experience-adept gratuitous-for-all.
"Hair" has a history of defying expectations. Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot's portrait of living low and staying loftier in the Eastward Village was, by all accounts, a mess upwards to the day information technology opened for previews at the Public Theater in 1967, with a last-minute switch of directors and several wholesale restagings. It was non an obvious candidate for the Broadway transfer it fabricated the post-obit year (with a new director, Tom O'Horgan, and a streamlined book). But of grade it ran and ran, for ane,750 performances, and became the concluding original Broadway musical to introduce more than than a couple of Meridian 40 hits.
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Its latest resurrection, however, may be the nearly surprising of all. "The show is the showtime Broadway musical in some time to take the authentic vocalism of today rather than the day earlier yesterday," wrote Clive Barnes in The New York Times when "Hair" opened in 1968. "Authentic voices of today" tend to grow cracked and quaint with age. A 1977 revival, which ran for 43 performances, suggested that "Hair" was strictly a show for its time, not for the ages.
That in that location's nothing of the museum — or, worse, of the vintage jukebox — near Ms. Paulus'southward product isn't because she'southward reinterpreted or even reframed it. She does what Bartlett Sher did for "South Pacific" last year, finding depths of graphic symbol and feeling in what near people dismissed as stale corn. It's non and so much what Ms. Paulus brings to "Pilus"; information technology's what she brings out of it, vital elements that were always waiting to exist rediscovered.
About important, she clearly knew early that "Hair" isn't just a celebration of the counterculture it depicts. The young folks here who sleep, trip and protest together may spout the philosophy of "peace, dearest, freedom, happiness." But, hey, they're all mostly in the waning days of their adolescence, a time when moods swing wide and machismo looms as a suffocating shadow.
The kids of "Hair" are cuddly, sugariness, madcap and ecstatic. They're too angry, hostile, confused and scared as hell — and non just of the Vietnam War, which threatens to devour the male members of their tribe. They're frightened of how the hereafter is going to change them and of not knowing what comes next. Interim out the lives of the adults they disdain (a charade at which Andrew Kober, Theo Stockman and Megan Lawrence are particularly expert) becomes a cathartic ritual.
Ms. Paulus vividly establishes the show's essential dichotomy in the first number, when she brings 2 performers to center stage. On the one hand, there'south Dionne (Sasha Allen), who leads the anthemic "Age of Aquarius" with soaring spirits and unimpeachable authorisation; on the other, standing to Dionne's right, there's Crissy (Allison Instance), with a scrunched-upward face and contorted posture that read like a plea for assistance, shelter and attending.
They all want attention, of form. Who doesn't at that age? At least except when you lot're longing to be invisible, similar Claude (Gavin Creel), a fellow who'due south nearly to be drafted, who leads the prove'southward most stirring songs of affirmation ("I Got Life") and helplessness ("Where Practise I Go").
Though a less flashy and show-offy presence than his best friend, Berger (Will Swenson), Claude is the divided soul of "Hair." At the Delacorte, Jonathan Groff, with his outsider's wistfulness, seemed such a natural in the role that I was sure that the Broadway "Hair" would suffer from his absence. But the pure-voiced Mr. Creel, late of "Mary Poppins," scruffs upward existent nice. That he seems more than a part of the gang than Mr. Groff did somehow makes this Claude come beyond equally more of a bellwether of the group, the ane who'southward most in touch with the ambiguity they're all feeling.
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Mr. Creel does not dominate the show; nor does the terrific Mr. Swenson, who finds an border of cruelty and desperation in the grandstanding Berger; nor does Caissie Levy (an fantabulous new addition to the cast) as the earnest politician Sheila, the woman both men sort of honey.
Every single ensemble fellow member emerges as an private, each with specific issues and knotty histories that no drug or slogan tin can resolve. (Even their nudity, and how they flaunt it, in the first-human action finale, further defines them.)
After the prove I couldn't finish thinking near what would happen to Bryce Ryness'due south sexually inchoate Woof; Ms. Example's hopeful, fretful Crissy; Darius Nichols's defiant, suspicious Hud; Kacie Sheik'due south pregnant, cheerily adrift Jeanie; or Ms. Allen's taunting, sensually assured Dionne. I could continue through the entire cast list.
Mr. MacDermot's music, which always had more than pop than acid, holds upwardly beautifully, given infectious life by the onstage band and the flavorfully blended voices of the cast. Scott Pask's exposed-wall set is the perfect playground for a earth in which imagination (aided past chemic substances) provides the décor.
But of grade no stage can comprise the hormone-stoked exuberance of those who inhabit it, whether they're yipping, unzipping or tripping, both merrily and scarily. Know that you lot may find yourself in intimate contact with various dancing, cajoling tribe members. They may give you daisies or leaflets. They may even enquire y'all to embrace them. Not that you oasis't already.
HAIR
The American Tribal Dear-Rock Musical
Volume and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado; music by Galt MacDermot; directed by Diane Paulus; choreography by Karole Armitage; sets past Scott Pask; costumes by Michael McDonald; lighting past Kevin Adams; audio by Acme Audio Partners; orchestrations by Mr. MacDermot; music managing director, Nadia DiGiallonardo; music coordinator, Seymour Crimson Press; wig pattern by Gerard Kelly; acquaintance producers, Jenny Gersten, Arielle Tepper Madover, Rebecca Gold/Debbie Bisno, Christopher Hart, Apples and Oranges, Tony and Ruthe Ponturo and Joseph Traina. Presented past the Public Theater, Oskar Eustis, artistic director; and Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Gary Goddard Entertainment, Kathleen K. Johnson, Nederlander Productions, Fran Kirmser Productions/Jed Bernstein, Marc Frankel, Broadway Beyond America, Barbara Manocherian/Wencarlar Productions, J Thou Productions/Terry Schnuck, Andy Sandberg, Jam Theatricals, Weinstein Company/Norton Herrick, Jujamcyn Theaters; Joey Parnes, executive producer; by special arrangement with Elizabeth Ireland McCann. At the Al Hirschfeld Theater, 302 West 45th Street, Clinton; (212) 239-6200. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.
WITH: Sasha Allen (Dionne), Allison Case (Crissy), Gavin Creel (Claude), Andrew Kober (Dad/Margaret Mead), Megan Lawrence (Mother/Buddahdalirama), Caissie Levy (Sheila), Darius Nichols (Hud), Bryce Ryness (Woof), Saycon Sengbloh (Abraham Lincoln), Kacie Sheik (Jeanie), Theo Stockman (Hubert) and Will Swenson (Berger).
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/theater/reviews/01hair.html
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