My friend Dan McDonald and I saw the revival of Hair Thursday night. In a move that may be unique in Broadway history, the show ran from March 2009 to June 2010 and has now returned for a two month summer run. The original show was, of course, a cultural phenomenon that opened in 1968, ran for 1750 performances (over four years), spawned a million-selling cast album and put several songs on the Top 40 (Aquarius, Hair, Easy to Be Hard, Good Morning Starshine, Let the Sunshine In). I've known the music since 1968 but I have only seen the show once, and that was a so-so touring company. Last night was a full-on, high energy Broadway production that knocked my socks off. It was far from perfect and it was easier to love if you knew the songs already, since it was nearly impossible to decipher the lyrics, but I do and so I did.
The most compelling aspect for me was that I have never before seen a Broadway show that told my life story, or a part of it anyway. Up there on stage was me and some of my friends from the 60's: the pot-smoking, long-hair-wearing, war-resisting, hippie freak radicals of the era. During a climactic draft card burning scene I thought back to that night in 1967 when my friend Charlie burned his card in a Notre Dame dorm. During a pot-smoking scene I visualized a group of us sitting crossed-legged in my candlelit room in the same dorm, listening to Jimi Hendrix and discussing the war. When they sang Sodomy near the top of the show I remembered the thrill and titillation I experienced as a 20-year old, marveling that “sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus” and “pederasty” were lyrics to a Broadway show!
There's a very brief moment in the show that likely goes unnoticed by many: high up on stage right, near the back wall, an actor puts a handgun to the head of another and pulls the trigger – a chilling reenactment on the famous Newsweek photo below. It left me stunned.
I realized while sitting in the St. James Theatre that the music of Hair is woven into my psyche. I know every word and I love every song. More than that though I was taken back in time to my life and was moved by the importance of it all, or at least the perceived importance of it. The 60s was like no other decade in our country's history, I am sure of that. The intensity of the culture clash was not something I simply read about; it was something I experienced, felt, grew from, was threatened by and was molded by.
In 2008 Charles Isherwood of the New York Times wrote about Hair's historical context:
"For darker, knottier and more richly textured sonic experiences of the times, you turn to the Doors or Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. Or all of them. For an escapist dose of the sweet sound of youth brimming with hope that the world is going to change tomorrow, you listen to Hair and let the sunshine in."
You know me. I don't have a lot of that hope, but it was great to spend two and-a-half hours remembering a time when I did.
"Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief." Vietnam, 1968. Photo Credit: Eddie Adams. Copyright AP.
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