'Hair' -Gielgud Theatre London 2010 ***THE REVIEWS*** — Page 4

If you thought Quentin Letts was bad in the Mail, check out Christopher Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday:

"Hair, just a nasty echo from the age of insanity

Wasn’t the musical Hair bad enough the first time round? Didn’t it do enough damage?

What does it say about us that, in an age when much of our great art and literature is unknown to the young, a London theatre is reviving this corny, immoral dross, peppered with smutty language?

All it reminds us of is an age when nudity and public swearing were shocking, rather than standard Friday night activities.

Like so many other people in the Sixties, I was affected by the sort of collective insanity that swept the West about that time and have often wondered, looking back, on the way I behaved, if some malicious person might have put something in the water.

But I always had enough sense and taste to know that Hair, whose tawdry propaganda songs seemed to echo incessantly on the airwaves, was both nasty and silly."

NY tickets are a little more than the 65 you state, most, at the general exchange rate, go more towards 75-80!

Well - I saw this last Friday and thought it was one of the best things in the West End. For the critics to say that this production has to be seen for the energy and performance of the cast alone is both patronising and condescending. This production is much more than that - it managed to create a coherent whole as compared to the 1989 national tour that had so previously put me off this show. It was, as PoL has observed, more about attitudes and philosophy than a conventional book musical and, to a large extent, was a shared experience between cast and audience. It was also a very American show: there were things in it that I hadn't understood from listening to the cast album that became clear having seen this production.

In fact I felt much of the criticism leveled at the show by the Daily Mail was unjustified simply because the show is objective and self-critical of the alternative lifestyles it portrays. I did feel it glamourised the use of drugs, in a way that Trainspotting is also supposed to do but doesn't. However the nudity was perfectly appropriate and added greatly to Where Do I Go. I didn't feel it was in the least gratuitous and I found myself going against my natural instincts and admiring the beauty of the female form to be seen.

The score was fantastic - no surprises there. A lot of the cast really seemed to be channeling the vibe; particularly Allison Case and Kaitlin Kiyan. Will Swenson's performance is definitely Olivier award nomination material, making Berger edgy, unpredictable and unnerving, whilst Caissie Levy brought an objective perspective to Shiela.