HAIR revival — Page 2

"The spirit of the original is impossible to be captured by actors who have BFA's in musical theatre from expensive division one private colleges. You can't play a hippie and have it be convincing. You must believe what you say. Same with a Boho."

Are you an actor? I'll never understand why anyone who claims to be an actor (I'm not assuming you are, but I've heard this statement way too many times) could say anything along these lines. An actor's JOB is to believe what he's saying and to be immersed in the social and political climate of the piece he is performing in. Any actor worth his salt really shouldn't have a problem doing well in Hair. The roles themselves are not the greatest challenge for the American actor. The problem is the overwhelming majority of young people who act (which is what this show calls for) don't have the desire to do that much work, and many don't have the capacity to understand and embody it. But I don't think it's an impossibility so much as a sad reality about a lot of young "actors."

Did anyone see the production of Hair at NYU this past fall? It was an extremely bold concept to say the least.

A very small young theatre cmpany did it in Chicago two years ago-- it was going to run for 2 or 3 weekends but was so well recieved it ran on and off for months at 3 or 4 venues. I can't recall the theatre group, but they did it poretty straight-forwardly and all the reviews picked up on the Iraq/VietNam parallels. It worked.

"probably still the best rock score every written for the theatre"


Margo you are a font of knowledge and maybe this is just an opinion on my part, but wouldn't you have to admit that Hedwig is honestly the only true ROCK musical out there. HAIR runs through the musical genres of the period ranging from folk to Supremes type girl groups. Hedwig is the only show focused on ROCK music outside of Tooth Of Crime. But then again maybe you view both as plays with music?

And not only that but the minute you say "Rock Score" doesn't that immediatly make it un-rock and roll. Not that I don't love the music in HAIR, I just think Hedwig is closer to being true ROCK music than Hair is.

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Updated On: 1/20/07 at 01:57 PM

Then get actors who sing. Any actor worth his salt shouldn't have a problem with Hair--it's a spirit that can be connected with. I just might take a lot of work and research to even capture the spirit. Too many actors are too lazy or too pretentious to immerse themselves in something that may seem trivial to them. That's the problem, I guess. Most people today who WOULD take on the roles probably wouldn't be aware of the shortcomings of their own work. But can it be done? Yes.

"Very hard for someone with a great entitled life that included dance and voice lessons as a child and a 4 year BFA education at a credible university. It's not raw enough, it's not real enough. The same problem exists with RENT."
Off the top of my head, I know five of the right original RENT principles had BFAs. The cast was marketed as raw, but many were trained in their skills. They were still gritty enough.

I see where you're coming from; it seems as if no one today could get into the spirit of shows like Hair or Rent. But I think there ARE people; the whole thing has to be approached in the right spirit and with the proper care.

I agree. And look at these photos from HAIR Off Broadway particularly the actual "hair." It doesn't like much like most revivals today, which seem to think the show takes place at WOODSTOCK.

Updated On: 1/20/07 at 02:22 PM

Thank you for those!!!

And look! No tye dye! Imagine that. My mother, a former flower child(as she prefers to be called and not hippie) costumed the show a while back and the tye dye was severly limited. Instead, as pictured above, most of the men were shirtless, in vests or military garb like the shirt Claude is wearing in the last picture, which is a much truer representation of the clothes of the time.

Yeah the rediculous bell bottoms and unnatural wigs, setting the show in 69(woodstock) is another aspect that hurts revivals. The important thing to remember in costuming HAIR is the influence the Native Americans and Military clothing had on how the kids dressed then.


Oh man, they are all soooo stoned in the first picture! Love it.

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I have always believed that the true test of "authenticity" for any show using music contemporary to its time is that if, outside of the show's context, the music is actually embraced by the public at large who are not, in the main, theatre fans. By that test, HAIR and a few other shows have succeeded.

The original cast album of HAIR is the last theatre album to top the Billboard Album chart. This was at a time when it was competing with new albums by The Beatles, The Doors, The Stones, Sly and The Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, The Supremes, etc. yet the kids buying albums at the time find it authentic enough that it was able to compete successfully against all of those seminal artists of that time. The album also spawned several top five singles recorded by popular artists of the day -- The Fifth Dimension's "Age of Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" went to #1 for 6 weeks, The Cowsills' "Hair went to #2, Oliver's "Good Morning Starshine" went to #3, and Three Dog Night's "Easy To Be Hard" hit #4, all in 1969. The kids buying those songs and that album didn't give a damn about Broadway for the most part -- they thought it was great rock music -- period -- and bought copies by the millions, so I stand by my statement that HAIR is a great, truly authentic rock score written for the theatre.

Similarly, "Day By Day" from the GODSPELL cast album hit #13 on Top 40 chart and both Murray Head and Yvonne Elliman had charted hits with songs from JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.

And say what you will about DREAMGIRLS having an authentic soul sound or not, but Jennifer Holliday's "And I Am Telling You" stayed at #1 on the R&B charts for 4 weeks and won Holliday a Grammy for Best R&B Female Performance (it also hit #22 of the Pop charts). And you can bet that 99% of the people that bought that single didn't care a whit about Broadway -- they bought it because it was an incredible R&B performance. It's also telling that the movie soundtrack has topped the Billboard album chart for two weeks in a row and a couple of songs from it are doing well on the singles chart.

HEDWIG is great and probably the only cast album I can remember ever seeing on jukeboxes in the East Village (which lean almost exclusively to alternative rock and punk, with a dash of hip-hop thrown in), but it never spawned a mainstream rock/pop hit. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a true rock sound -- it does -- but the fact remains that it was never embraced by mainstream rock fans of the late 90s to nearly the extent that HAIR was welcomed and enjoyed by rock fans of the late 60s (or that DREAMGIRLS was embraced by R&B fans in 1982, as well as now).

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It's true. HEDWIG's score was really indistinguishable from much of what you heard on contemporary rock radio in those days (and even now). That's why it was able to do so well in the rock bars in the East Village -- the music blended seemlessly with everything else on those jukeboxes. I'm really hoping Steve Trask will write another score for theatre one of these days.

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Updated On: 1/20/07 at 03:13 PM

HAIR is one of my all time favorites.
I prefer some of the "rawness" of the material on the Original Off Broadway Cast Recording to the more polished versions on the Original Broadway Cast version.

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In responce to your question SD. It is noted by many who were involved in the production aspect of the original HAIR that the show lost some of its magic as time wore on because of casting. After the first few casts they began casting only trained actors in all of the roles. It was then that the show became about playing a hippie and then putting on your fashion forward clothing and going to have drinks at Joe Allen's, and it was then that the writing was on the wall for the original production. Much like the last oh 5 years or so of RENT casts.

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It is noted by many who were involved in the production aspect of the original HAIR that the show lost some of its magic as time wore on because of casting.

Oh yes, I probably should have mentioned that in my post...I have heard similar things, and would have figured as much because, as you say, it's true of Rent today. But here's why I think that doesn't matter, and why I think the level of training of a 2007 Hair revival cast wouldn't be an issue...

Imagine, say, 20 or 25 years down the road, when Rent will be long gone from the Nederlander and will have spawned a number of revivals around the world. Future-Me, someone who never saw the original Broadway cast live (and actually have seen a couple of Broadway casts that were just meh), will nevertheless think back to the Broadway production and say that these newfangled revivals just miss the mark completely (and most of them probably will).

Part of that is nostalgia, but I think a bigger part of that is simply the fact that I saw the original staging, original costumes, original lighting, original set, original orchestrations, all of which were the largely same as they were in 1996...what I will really crave is a revival that hits that 1996 bullseye creatively--not necessarily an ACL-like carbon copy, but something similar. If you're looking for an authentic representation of the era rather than a radical re-interpretation, I believe that original look and feel will go farther in terms of authenticity than will a futile search for "authentic" cast members 25 years later when the real deal just doesn't exist anymore.

Applying that thought back to Hair...if it were revived tomorrow, it wouldn't matter whether the cast was pulled from the fountain in Washington Square Park or from Tisch across the street--I still would never believe 100% that the people I'm seeing onstage are the real deal simply because it's 2007 and I just know they're not hippies. Period. So in that sense the "magic" of the original could never completely be recreated. However, what would make the production feel more real to me, someone who has read, seen, and heard a decent amount about the original Hair, is how well the creative aspect is pulled off. If that effectively recreates 1968 for me, it shouldn't matter whether the cast is all trained or not--the simple fact that the original Hair was (my God) 40 years ago prevents them from being authentic to begin with, so the most we can hope for is that a 2007 cast, whatever their background, would do their best.

Eh, this whole idea is in my head and I'm not sure how much sense it makes to anyone else, but...there it is. I've written too much already.

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Sounds awful. Interesting but awful.