ARTS REVIEW: 'HAIR'

The Cast Will Throw You Their Pants and Mess with Your Hair

By: Josh Moorhead

January 10, 2011

(The Pantages Theater in Hollywood, California) It's not that the hippies of the '60s invented anything. Drugs, love, and good vibes have been around pretty much since before mankind even popped up on Earth. That is, if you believe in the loving, good-vibing creator thing. It's just that maybe they did it better than anyone else, or they set the standard to be measured by ever since. Hippies now are such a re-issue, or devolved into a lesser, at least less sincere form by way of the disaffected hipster.

One doesn't even necessarily need to take the same hit of acid to get the hippie's trip. You could just go see Hair! The musical, which started off-Broadway in 1967 as a piece very much of its time, keeps on truckin' today as a glimpse of history, or at least in the simplified, idealized way we capture it through art. But it's downright infectious. After some time off, a revival version of Hair popped back on Broadway in March of 2009 and went on to win the Tony in the same category. You gotta give it to Tony--the guy must have taste.

The musical, of course, surrounds hippies. It's all about their ideas, habits and mantras, and how those all stack up when one of their own (they call him Aquarius) gets his draft card in the mail. The culture of the '60s is still so ever-present (The Beatles are still topping the charts) that the '60s themselves don't feel that long ago. But the musical is now 45 years old. That's a ways. Think about it--draft cards?!

After 45 years, everyone pretty much at least has an inkling of what Hair is all about. I definitely did. When I was, like,10, "Age of Aquarius (Let The Sunshine In)" was my favorite song. But seeing it in total, in person, is a lot different than catching five minutes of it on the radio or at the end of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The most striking thing about Hair, and immediately so, is its incorporation of the audience as active participant to the show on stage. From moment one, one of the show's leads, a character named Berger, takes to front-center and begins talking to, climbing on, and encouraging the audience. It was almost like going to church except I've never been in one where the pastor took off his pants and then stood spread-eagle in my face. But there is a lot of call and response, and it goes on through the show.

The audience involvement isn't just a gimmick--it's an extension of the show's point, which is, you know, loosen up, love one another... And just as it's sent up for yucks, in the plot of the show when a parent or a tourist doesn't understand why the kids have long hair or patched jeans, the same effect plays out on the audience when up-tight LA ho-hums who spent hours on their look previous to show are fooled with. The cast will run around and jump on your chair and hug you and throw you their pants and play with your hair. Berger moons the audience a bunch of times. And if your sense of humor isn't loose enough or you're too coiled, it's going to aggravate. If you're groovy, it's going to thoroughly entertain.

Count me in that bunch. The show is a lot of fun, but it also offers a lot of poignant moments as well. It's not all just platitudes on print-outs. Aquarius's inevitable choice isn't that much different than the march most of the hippie generation took. How strange is it that the boomer era of peace, love, and understanding created the world we live in today? The performances are hardly all goofy either, the songs are catchy (just ask ten-year-old me), and they're sung with a big dose of passion. That's the infectious part of it. The cast just isn't going to convince the audience to let their hair down (convenient phrasing!) or of the tragedies of young love, conformity, or lack thereof, if they don't have the right dose of sincerity behind it. They do. And there's something here for every audience member to relate to, even if it's the detached in-show spectators (tourists, parents).

The show closes on a particularly thoughtful moment. I was a little worried. I had never seen Hair. Was this really how it ends? That's okay, I thought. That's a true statement on the world. Often times, the brick wall of reality is too hard, too dark for the sunshine of idealism and hope to penetrate. Yeah, in the Tea Party, Great Recession world two years after Hope/Change--this is the reality we have to face. I saw why Hair won the revival award and was a keen choice for revival to begin with. We're gonna have to beat this thing in incremental, trudging practicality.

But then something happened. The cast took the stage for their final bows, and in a moment that I will approximate as triumph, they began to sing "Let the Sunshine In" again, this time with all that hope and idealism that didn't quite die with the final scene, and then they invited the audience to sing it up there on stage with them. So there I was, front right, surrounded by hippies, kids from the cheap seats, and fancy-clothes boomers shouting at the top of our lungs that that shine keep on shining. I don't know how long that moment lasted exactly, but I feel like, a few days later, the sun's still shining, and that Hair promises there's still something still soft, shining, and glowing, down to your knees if you let it, no matter how hard the world gets.

Hair continues playing at the beautiful Pantages Theater (seriously, it's a whole lot of whoa in there) until January 23rd. Tickets and more information are available at BroadwayLA.org.