If you object to two or more of the following: smoking pot, gay sex, promiscuity, passivism, nudity and long hair – then seeing the first half of Hair ought do you some good. If not, you may want to catch the final ten minutes and the curtain call, when this revival at last achieves a vague echo of its original import. We hear a news bulletin that G.W. Bush will escalate troop deployment in Iraq and the tribe sing Let the Sunshine In.
The production team of Paul Warwick Griffin and the multi-talented Charl-Johan Lingenfelder, together with several of the cast, have done far better before. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was long on charm, Jesus Christ Superstar was at least dramatically confident. This particular version of Hair for its superficial ersatz approach should be renamed ‘Wig’. Colin Muir’s wigs are wonderful creations; several are boldly anachronistic; but just because the hairpiece fits doesn’t instantly make one a convincing hippy.
Part of the problem is how far society has shifted since the Age of Aquarius. With current films like Shortbus pushing the edge, the famous Hare Krishna (“beads, flowers, freedom, happiness”) song in which the cast strip nude, is no longer shocking or even a statement of freedom. Arguably, it is the opposite, a commodity packaged for audience consumption. The gentleman sitting next to me in the third row used opera glasses.
Overall, the female singers are stronger than the men are. Some of the cast simply can’t sing and it’s hard to figure why they’re up there. Lead Rowan Cloete is satisfactory. Bruce Little does a pleasing turn in drag as anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Very poor accent coaching has produced forced, affected, whiny voices that sound like they belong to cartoon characters. The result is that much of the dialogue and the lyrics are unintelligible.
Keith Anderson’s simple set conceptions deserve some praise.
