For what I hope is the last time, but probably won't be...
Hair is, always has been, and always will be "a structured Broadway musical." It has, always has had, and always will have a book.
Period. End of report.
It is not a "non-" or "un-book," as popular as it was to throw that term around in its heyday. It is no more a collection of loosely connected vignettes than Company. People just don't understand the structure, and I'm sorry that they don't, but you would think, especially after Paulus' revival (which, at least to me, proved that the problem is not that the plot doesn't exist, but that it needs to be brought to the fore instead of buried in fluid-abstract staging), that someone would finally have gotten at least a hint. Just goes to show that if wishes were fishes, the ocean would be full.
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, free-form, what-have-you, the show is, as the revival 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).
If you still can't follow it, then I dunno what to tell ya.
Formerly gvendo2005
Broadway Legend
joined: 5/1/05
Blocked: After Eight, suestorm, david_fick, emlodik, lovebwy, Dave28282, joevitus, BorisTomashevsky, Seb28
Updated On: 7/25/18 at 10:31 AM
