| Hair Segerstrom Center for the Arts Through Feb. 6, 2011 :: scfta.org |
Claiming to having seen an original production of Hair may not be on par with claiming to have attended a Beatles concert or been at Woodstock, but it’s certainly cocktail party conversation fodder, and does put one in a self-described elite group of theater aficionados of a certain age. By the same token, one day, audience members who have seen the latest production of the “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” now playing at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts may be laying claim to having been witness to a 21st century phenomenon: the rocking of Orange County.
In case you doubted whether the bedecked and dignified regulars who attend Segerstrom Center performances could get down, be advised that the touring company of the Tony Award-winning 2009 Broadway revival of Hair is filled with so much infectious energy, joy and talent, that even the bluest of bluebloods will be rocking in the aisles and eventually dancing on the stage.
In other words, Hair has aged well.
In many ways, the show feels as timely today as it was in 1968, when it was first produced on Broadway. The facts of the issues may have changed but the sentiments have not. We are no longer fighting in Vietnam, but when a character says “The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the land they stole from the red people” – with a few word substitutions – the sentiment feels fresh. And while the distractions of youth may have changed (the only electronic device to be found onstage opening night of Hair was during the curtain call, when a cast member took pictures with his cell phone of his fellow actors cavorting with audience members), their quest to make changes, to make a difference, to reject the status quo, is eternally modern.
But Hair is less about issues than it is about love – and joy – and – believe it or not – making the hard decisions that determine your life’s course, and this contemporary incarnation of the play brings those elements out in spades. Touring companies of Broadway hits are not always impressive, but it’s hard to imagine that this superbly talented band of young performers, led by Steel Burkhardt as the iconoclastic Berger and Paris Remillard as the tormented Claude, could be any better than they are.
Marvelous singers, utterly convincing actors, the “tribe” (read cast) is perhaps most impressive in how they make you believe that you have just stumbled across them as they go about their happily alternative lives, trying on costumes and ideologies and lovers with the abandon that only comes with youth. The show is by no means updated; we are still firmly rooted in 1968, and it’s a testament both to the direction and the performances that this group of dedicated dropouts determined to conquer the world through love and peace do not seem naïve but rather admirable, and maybe even a little powerful.
The familiar songs are given just enough of an updated twist not to appear kitschy; the onstage band and the gifted singers remind us just how lovely and funny and sometimes even inspiring the music from Hair is. My Boomerish memories of the music from Hair are more based on the pop versions of songs like “Good Morning Starshine,” “Where Do I Go,” “The Age of Aquarius,” etc. than on how they sounded in the actual show. The big surprise of the evening is “Let the Sunshine In,” which has now become so culturally ubiquitous that it is the unfortunate anthem for a window cleaner commercial; in this version of Hair at least, the song is as far from a bouncy feel-good number as you can get. Sung almost plaintively, its refrain eventually trails off to a few a capella voices filled with the anguish and longing that has always been the subtext of the characters’ – and all young people’s – search for their own version of liberation.
Go see Hair and find a little liberation of your own.
