Is there a good professionally recorded production of HAIR?

[CorkySt.Clair]

Posted: 6/6/18 at 8:47am

Hi all,
I have recently fallen in love with the music of HAIR, and I am desperately looking for a way to watch it. No theaters in my area are putting it on, and I don’t want the movie to my first exposure to the story. I have found one professionally recorded production on YouTube, from the Merrick Theater a couple years ago. Has anyone seen this/do you recommend it? I want to see this show more than anything, but I want to make sure that i find a good iteration of it.
Thank you! Updated On: 6/6/18 at 08:47 AM

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 6/6/18 at 12:28pm

HAIR lends itself to different interpretations as it really doesn't follow the traditional book form.   Only the text is, not the staging.  

Milos Forman's fabulous 1979 film adaptation is it own interpretation so it is completely different from the original 1968 Broadway incarnation which is basically connected vignettes.  The film uses elements of the story to create a standard film plotline.  

This professionally recorded production from the Merrick Theatre comes close to the original staging so I suggest you watch this to get a jist of what the original 1968 Broadway production was like.  It also shares the tone of the recent 2009 Broadway revival. 

[CorkySt.Clair]

Posted: 6/6/18 at 3:39pm

Thank you so much for all your insight! i will definitely be watching both the movie and the Merrick production in the coming days.

[RicardoMagon]

Posted: 6/6/18 at 3:43pm

Just watch the 09 revival.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 6/6/18 at 5:14pm

BrodyFosse123 said: "Milos Forman's fabulous 1979 film adaptation"

Fabulous? My ass. The hippies were portrayed simply as oddballs, without any understanding of their motives, their search for truth, their commitment to the peace-love movement, their efforts to create a world based on human values.

Further, Forman failed to understand Hair's structure, and sadly, so do many even now. It's not that the plot doesn't exist, contrary to the opinion of critics of the show in its time (and even today), just that it needs to be brought to the fore, as it has been in recent revivals. It is no more a collection of "connected vignettes" than Company.

The sole difference between Hair and most traditional book musicals is that, at least in its Broadway form, it attempts to cover a lot of historical -- and plot -- exposition early in the show using songs instead of dialogue, and talking more about themes than character. In a very short succession from "Aquarius" on, we:

* Meet a cross-section of the individuals the hippie movement was made up of (extroverts looking for a chance to flaunt their individuality, young people of color and diverse sexual orientations looking for a movement that would accept them and their causes, the nerdy misfits who just want to maybe make movies and the crazy pregnant chicks who love them, and so forth).

* Get some exposure to the mind-altering substances that opened them up to new things about themselves and others.

* Watch as the world inevitably turns against the kids when they realize these entitled little $#!+s have new values they don't agree with, much less understand, and the kids respond by attempting to prove that this isn't empty sloganeering from navel-gazers with weird fashion sense and they do want to change the world. (Sound familiar?)

* See their lives disintegrate as the things they've been protesting and re-examining cut close to home.

In short, a potted history of the hippie movement compressed for time, through which our characters emerge.

By the time Claude sings "I Got Life," you should have no confusion as to who to follow and what's going on, no matter how psychedelic, fluid-abstract, what-have-you, the show is, as the revival(s) proved by portraying a couple of characters more realistically and making things in the book a touch more linear (compare the revival script to the original, and aside from some missing ad-libs that were a hit back in the day and some ill-advised edits to the book, they are virtually the same in form, meaning, and spirit). It did not need a "standard film plot-line" to work for the screen, and anyone who says otherwise was / is just not trying hard enough to grok what the show is about. Period.

As for "coming close to the original staging," few productions today do. And that's due in large part, at least according to original cast members, to two factors:

1. Topical references to politicians, celebrities, events, and even theater and literature of the time (compare, for example, the lyrics to "Three-Five-Zero-Zero” to extracts from Allen Ginsberg's poem Wichita Vortex Sutra), which must have seemed very current then, ring less potent now because audiences (and the people presenting the show) have grown further removed from the Sixties.

2. Surviving co-author Jim Rado's influence. As I said in another thread on this forum, Jim often consults on new revivals and adds a ton of stuff, both new and from pre-Broadway material, that he has yet to codify into a further revised script for the licensor (the current version dates from 1995; Tams-Witmark confirmed to me that any new changes only appear in productions if Rado works with them directly, and they have not received nor are they able to pass on any of the new material), but every time it gets farther away from what made the show work. (Some of the Tribe, as they call themselves, have speculated that, being 85, he still tinkers with the show so much because he's gradually forgetting that he wrote it in the first place or is starting to believe what people have said about it after all this time.)

Now, as for your initial question, OP: you want to see a production that comes really close to the Broadway original, with ad-libs intact, and benefited from direct input from members of the original first-run companies?

Try this one on for size.

It's very raw (a student-directed production at NYFA's California campus from a couple years ago; they had a very small space, no bigger than a screening room or lecture hall, but they really used it well), but what it lacks in polish and resources, it more than makes up for in spirit and a certain rough charm that really packs a wallop, especially toward the end of the show. I find it a welcome antidote to the slickness of newer productions. The director had a dream to present an honest portrait of that era and I feel he did just that, at the same time honoring the original intent of the show's creators. The performers playing Jeanie, Claude, and Woof leave indelible impressions, and the relationship between Claude and Berger gains depth from not being overplayed.

Also, one thing the NYFA production really nails is something that revivals of many classic shows from that era and prior don't get: if the first half is played with a lighter tone (in this case, bringing the joyous element of the Sixties to balance the hatred of war), then there's a contrast between Acts One and Two. This makes the solemn scenes more solemn because the downward turn of events is greater. It never gets too dark in Act One, and you feel more for Claude in Act Two, as you should. The revival(s) got too dark too soon. Maybe that's a reflection of how today's sensibilities play against yesterday's material, I dunno, but that's just how I see it.

Updated On: 6/6/18 at 05:14 PM

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 6/6/18 at 5:37pm

Got it.

Have dinner plans so gotta rush.

Talk soon.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 6/6/18 at 7:34pm

Well done analysis g.d.e.l.g.i.. Agree w much of what you say. 

I always remember a sense of  urgency in the 2nd act. . This was the present day politics. There is almost a  inexorable destiny pulling  towards the  ending.